MASS EFFECT: ONE
by Jennyslaw
Summary: What happened in the hours before and after endgame? Mass Effect: ONE tells that tale through the eyes of Mass Effect's most memorable characters, each with one mission, to help finish what Shepard started: defeat the Reapers. Each of Shepard's actions has shaped the person they have become. Now, her final action will shape their decisions and affect their lives.
1. Foreword

_**MASS EFFECT: ONE**_

* * *

 **Foreword**

 _ **W**_ hat happened in the MASS EFFECT universe in the hours before and after Shepard made her final choice? It's a question I've had ever since my first playthrough of the original series. What happened on the Citadel? Where were all the characters we grew to love during that time period? What happened to them? What was it like on Earth during the final hours? Who was there? Everybody has their own ideas, and some have even written their own fan fiction story to tell it. This _one_ , however, is my version.

I chose to center my story, not on the main character of Commander Shepard, but around three of the series' most iconic female characters: Liara T'Soni, Aria T'Loak, and Jack. Though they aren't the only characters featured, I've always felt they were the richest, the character's with the most depth. There are several male characters who make pretty strong appearances in here, too, but I wanted the women to helm each of their own arcs. I wanted to tell the tale of those who were the most influenced by a strong, female paragon Shepard.

I've tried not to base this story solely on my FemShep (frankly, the best Commander Shepard ever…*wink, wink*). I do not describe her by anything other than her personality traits. So, as you read this story, feel free to picture your own FemShep, not my idea of what Shepard should look like.

However, I have stuck to this set of criteria from my gameplay: female Commander Shepard (preferred Jennifer Hale's voice-acting over the guy's), 99.9% paragon w/ a few essential renegade options (like killing Kai Leng, because the bastard deserved it!), FemShep/Liara pairing, lost Kaiden on Virmire, kept the entire crew from MASS EFFCT 2 alive; and in MASS EFFECT 3, cured the genophage at the cost of one very special salarian named Mordin Solus, and made Shepard's final choice be the only one I thought she could make. You'll discover what that was as you read.

This story jumps timelines quite often. Please pay attention to the heading of each chapter. I will preface them with the location—as in, _The Citadel_ or _Earth_ or _The Normandy—_ followed by _Before Endgame_ or _After Endgame_. Another warning, for those critical of technical accuracy, I'm not a science geek and I'm not down on all the lingo. I just love the story and I love the characters. So, if you see where I may have gotten something wrong, please feel free to tell me. I want to correct any inaccuracies I may have made.

Below is a listing of the name of each chapter as they are posted, along with the character featured and a short synopsis. This will be for those who might prefer to go back and read the story in character order versus my idea of how the story should flow.

I do hope you enjoy reading this story. I started writing it in 2015, put it on the back burner for more than a year, then picked it back up in January of 2017. Finished it December 23, 2017. This has been a labor of love for me. I fell in love with these diverse characters and I hope as you read that love shines through. It's full of action and drama with some moments of comedy, because you need comedy in a story that can get real dark real quick.

And if you're wondering why I've named it MASS EFFECT: ONE, you'll have to read…

I do not own any of the character's (except for several original characters that will appear in later chapters), or the MASS EFFECT story. I just wanted to add to it.

* * *

 _ **CHAPTER TITLES IN POSTED ORDER**_

 _ONE Breath_ (Liara)

Crash landed on a strange planet, communications down, Liara T'Soni and the rest of the _Normandy_ 's crew face an uncertain future. But a far more pressing concern is one that weighs on every member of the crew—what has happened to Commander Shepard?

 _The Shape of ONE's Dreams_ (Aria)

As the war with the Reapers closes in on its zenith, the Citadel comes under threat. The Council looks to the only person on the station who has faced a hostile takeover before and lived to tell a tale of victory. There's just one slight problem. No one commands Omega's ruler but Aria T'Loak.

 _LondONEarth_ (Jack)

The Reapers have seized Earth. Millions are dying. In the face of a constant threat, a small squadron of STG agents have been given a mission - to find and rescue a secret infiltration unit holed-up by Reaper insurgents. The have a secret weapon of their own, however, in the form of three biotics sent to offer barrier and combat support, one of which goes by many names.

 _ONE Last Gift_ (Liara)

Cut off, questions continue to go unanswered on the Normandy, but for Liara T'Soni, strange happenings bring some answers to light.

 _Only ONE Rule_ (Aria)

Betrayed and carted off like a common criminal, Aria finds herself imprisoned like a rat in a cage, when all hell breaks loose on the Citadel. The Reapers have arrived. Does she escape? How will she survive? For an asari as resourceful as Aria T'Loak, she's more than up to the challenge.

 _#ONE Fan _(alternate character)

The Reapers have attacked the Citadel, focusing their forces on the Presidium and the Council, but the Wards have not gone unscathed. Seen through the eyes of a child, something terrible has happened on Zakera Ward. Amidst the chaos, one person discovers the strength hiding within to protect the innocent.

 _Two Two ONE_ (Jack)

On the decimated streets of London, an STG infiltration unit inches their way toward a rendezvous point. The world around them falls apart. From one end of Earth to the other, battles are being lost, but one salarian major has a rather elementary idea to break through the hordes of Reaper troops in order to complete their mission.

 _A Signal To No ONE _(alternate character)

Trapped on an Alliance dreadnaught in the middle of nowhere, with nothing better to fill her time than to flit about the ship unseen, the heroine of this story learns an uncomfortable truth. The problem with some truths is that they can be so misleading, especially when in the wrong hands. If she were going to unearth these truths, place them in the hands of one who could do something about it, it would take a bit of stealth, something she knows all about.

 _We're ONE_ (alternate character _s_ )

Reaper troops have swarmed into the Citadel. A volus and a salarian scientist, untrained in the ways of warfare, have taken to hiding in a last ditch effort to save their skins, when the appearance of a Citadel keeper, and the possibility of a scientific breakthrough, spurs them into action.

 _ONE More Chance to Die_ (Aria)

Aria and her two-man team make it to a C-Sec landing pad. The plan is simple - get to the Presidium, and get to the Council. Getting from point A to point B isn't going to be a walk in the park. Aria knows this, but the battle she and her team face is far more than any of them are prepared for.

 _ONE Thing At A Time_ (Jack)

The Salarian Tactical Group has accomplished the next step in their mission - distract the Reaper hordes long enough to infiltrate the cathedral and come to the rescue of the secret resistance team. There's little time to plan an attack in the smoke-filled streets of London, and no sense in sending out a scout that might not come back. Their plan is simple - get in, no matter the cost.

 _ONE by ONE_ (Aria)

Aria's plan hasn't changed - save the Council, and preserve the future of the galaxy by getting them off the Citadel and getting back to where she belongs, Omega - but the route and the players in the game have changed. Fighting to stay alive, Aria, Bailey, and Bray race for the relative safety of the Citadel's underground network. There, they find new allies and a hope to accomplish their mission that didn't have before. But as one door to possible freedom opens, Aria knows there will always be an obstacle.

 _BackbONE_ (Jack)

Holed up in a shielded cathedral in the middle of London and right in the thick of a Reaper war, Jack finds herself at an emotional crossroads. One of her brightest students, Ensign Rodriguez, has been gravely injured. Now she must choose - remain with her, fight to her last breath to keep the girl alive? Or do as duty, Shepard and the war demands - get out there and complete the mission?

 _Control of nONE_ (Aria)

The Elbrus waits on a distant landing pad. One Knight and three weary pawns trek in its direction. Unknownst to them, someone waits, someone who has crowned himself the Rook. He awaits the approach of the Knight, the Queen and the King who wishes to dominate her, knowing that His time to regain control has come. It has always been about control, for the Knight will soon come to know that she can never be more powerful than the Rook.

 _ONE Hope_ (Liara)

The Normandy's senior officers have been called to the War Room. Word from the Alliance has finally come. Has the war with the Reapers ended? Did Shepard make it off the Citadel in time? Liara can no more answer these questions than can the next person, but one thing she knows in her heart - _Shepard is alive._

 _All For ONE_

(Includes all characters but those of the Normandy)

 _Part I_ (Kolyat, Aria & Bailey, Jack)

 _Part II -_ (Ensign Rodriguez, Aria & Bailey, Kolyat, Jack)

 _Part III **-** _(Kolyat, Conrad)

 _Part IV -_ (Jack, Kolyat, Aria & Bailey)

 _Part V -_ (Jack, Ensign Rodriguez)

 _Part VI -_ (Aria & Bailey, Jack)

 _Part VII_ \- (Ensign Rodriguez, Aria & Bailey)

 _Part VIII_ \- (Aria & Bailey, Kolyat, Ensign Rodriguez, LET)

From the Citadel to Earth, the players in the galaxy's war against the Reapers make their last stand. The full brunt of the fight comes to Jack on the streets of London as she fights alongside her former crewmates to lead the Reapers away from Shepard, Hammer, and the final push toward the beam. Deep in the winding tunnels of the Citadel, Kolyat struggles to lead his team in search of the Council while simultaneously struggling to live down _and_ live up to the reputation of his father. Struggling just to stay alive, Ensign Luciana Rodriguez, as well as the injured Major Hicox, Commander Rentola and his small squad of STG soldiers must find a way to protect themselves against encroaching husks as Westminster Cathedral's shields begin to fail. Down to two from a four-man team, Aria and Bailey stealthily traverse the "back roads" of the Presidium, barely avoiding Reaper abominations on their way to bring an end to the Illusive Man. Much will be lost in the final hour as the seconds tick down to endgame, but much will also be gained-courage, love, acceptance, and in the end, sacrifice. All for the ONE who will sacrifice something greater in their behalf-her life.

 _ONE For All_ (Liara/Shepard)

Feeling lost, Liara makes her way to Shepard's cabin where one last dream awaits...


	2. ONE Breath

**MASS EFFECT: ONE**

* * *

 **ONE Breath**

 ** _F_** _ires burn. Smoke rises._

 _Once proud spires stand broken and teetering, hunched like old men with frail backbones. Their lights have gone out. Their windows are dark._

 _The city rumbles. The ground shudders, but there are no cries of the dying._

 _I am alone. I am one heartbeat. I am one breath of life._

EEE

 **The Normandy - After Endgame**

 _ **"L** iara, where are you?"_

Blue eyes shot open in the dark. Seconds passed. Where was she? What were those awful sounds? Whose voice had called out to her in the blackness?

Then it all came back. Earth, the Reapers, the Citadel, escaping on the Normandy, the crash…and the terrible hole in her heart.

The awful sounds were that of the Normandy's engines struggling to return to life. They had an earthy resonance far too reminiscent of the moan of Reapers. Ashley had seen her to her quarters, telling her she needed to rest. She hadn't wanted to, and sleep had eluded her at first, but her body had given in to what it craved. Was it Ashley's voice she heard? Had she called her to awaken?

Liara sat up, her eyes scanning the darkness for the source of the voice. "Hello? Is someone there?"

No answer. The monitors on the far wall were blank. _As lifeless as Glyph,_ she thought and her heart pinged in its empty shell. There was no one there. She must have imagined the voice…or dreamt it. Yes, that was it. A dream. But it had seemed so real.

Tossing her legs over the edge, Liara got out of bed. She had no way of knowing how long she had been asleep. It could not have been long. The Normandy had no more power than when her eyes had slipped shut.

Through the crack in the door to her quarters, Liara saw lanterns and beams of incorporeal floating lights. Voices bounced off metallic walls, meeting her across the length of the room. She heard Vega's voice above them all, shouting out commands above the incessant on and off drone of the ship's engines. Overhead lights winked on and then went out as quickly with the engine's rhythm. In those few seconds, the bank of monitors filled with static, showering her in an otherworldly light. They then dimmed and went out.

No light shown at Glyph's station.

While she slept, the rest of the crew had remained hard at work. She hated that Ashley had talked her into this respite. She didn't deserve it. She wasn't the only one who suffered injury and loss. They all had.

Following the floating lantern light, Liara shoved aside one lifeless door, ignoring its protesting hiss, and went out into the mess hall. She willed herself not to wander as aimlessly as the lights, and instead gave her feet purpose, moving them in Vega's direction. She caught sight of him, lit by another crewmember's beam as they passed him on the far side of the elevator. On closer inspection, a smear of red blood stood out like an insignia on his white shirt and a bandage seeped with the same color on his forearm. His back to the war memorial, he was craning his neck upward to stare into the elevator's shaft.

"Hey Cortez! You ain't found that coupling yet? I could do that with my eyes closed!"

Another voice, farther away came to her ears. "If you think you can do better, Vega, get up here."

"Nah, nah. Time you learn to fix something other than shuttles. You know what they say…hard work will make a man outta ya."

"Uh-huh. And what does that make you?"

"It makes me THE MAN standing here with a light on your ass."

"Yeah? Well, that's probably why I haven't found the coupling yet."

"Ha-ha."

Her movement must have caught Vega's attention for he turned his eyes away from Cortez doing whatever it was he was doing in the elevator shaft. She wished now she had not interrupted them. She had always enjoyed listening to the two men's verbal sparring. Now, it was as if she needed it, needed the sense of normalcy to keep her mind off everything that had happened.

"Liara," Vega said. His tone had changed. The voice of the jokester had gone, replaced with one of sympathy. "Are you all right?"

She did not wish to hear it. "I am fine." She kept a straight face; a poker face Shepard would have called it. "Is something wrong with the lift?"

"Yeah, it was damaged in the crash. We're trying to get it back in working order for when the ship's power returns. Shouldn't be long now by the look of things."

"How can I help?"

"Um…are you sure?" he asked, lowering the flashlight in his hand.

"Hey, Vega! Where's my light?"

Thank the goddess Cortez intervened when he did. Her ire had risen at the question. As if she were a driveling mess because of the backward turn their mission had taken! She was as much a soldier as he was. There was no need to treat her like a suckling child! She could stand on her own two feet. She could face what was coming.

"Oh, hey, yeah man. Sorry," Vega said, eager to turn away from the blue fire in her eyes. "My bad."

"Liara," came the voice of Cortez from within the elevator shaft. "Rested?"

"Somewhat. Do you need any help?"

"Nope," he said with a grunt. "Thanks for the offer, though. Just about got it." She heard a clicking noise and a hum of energy as the engines revved and then died again. "That ought to do it."

Cortez's two legs appeared from out of the darkness above, swung, and landed sharply on two feet before them. Other than a superficial cut on his forehead, he seemed fine. "We should be up and running when they are. Now, onto the next project."

"I would like to help, if I can."

Cortez nodded. An unspoken understanding existed in his eyes. "I know what you mean. Gotta keep busy, right?"

Liara looked away. She did not care to see the truth his eyes conveyed. "Yes. What can I do?"

"I think we got it from here," Vega said. He seemed to have caught the drift and lost his overemphasized expression of sympathy, but it still gleamed behind a veil of camaraderie. "We next have the unenviable job of getting the toilets back in working order. Wouldn't want to drag you in there."

He ended with a laugh Liara forced herself to copy.

"No, of course not."

Cortez patted her shoulder. "If you need something to keep you busy, I heard Garrus was having an issue in main battery. I'm sure he could use your help."

"Thank you, Cortez."

"You're welcome."

His smile was comforting, but there it was again. The unspoken sympathy. No one was saying it, but everyone was thinking it. Her heart pinged again as they walked away, the absence of their bodies revealing the war memorial to her fully. Even in the waning light, she could make out the names of the people they had lost. Kaiden, Legion, Thane, Mordin and a host of others. How many more would they have to add? How many more sacrifices would they have to make? And where would they place the most important name? Liara shoved the thought aside, barricaded it with an imaginary mortar and moved on.

"Come on, Cortez," she heard Vega say as they parted ways. "Let's go fix the shitters."

Cortez harrumphed. "Do you have any manners, Vega?"

"Uhhh…no."

Liara turned her back on their banter and the memorial. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the semi-darkness, she could easily make her way through the mess hall toward main battery. A quick turn through the galley and past the cryotubes and she was nearly there. A glimpse to her right along the way caught sight of Dr. Chakwas. A lantern illuminated her at her desk. She was seated, her head balanced in her hands. Liara paused, tempted to turn toward the Medical Bay, when a turian curse reached her ears. Though her eyes lingered on the doctor for a moment longer, Liara continued into the main battery to find Garrus and discover what had caused the former C-Sec officer to lose his temper.

EEE

 ** _T_** he curses continued farther in. Here the darkness was complete. The consoles she was so used to seeing Garrus slave over were effectively dead. They fluttered now and then with an orange and yellow glow like a heart trying to maintain its beat long enough for help to arrive. Liara was less optimistic of its chance than was Vega. They were all lucky to be alive let alone to have crash landed on a hospitable planet in one piece. She had a feeling they would be boarding rescue craft before long.

A turian curse and a human one issued along the left torpedo bay where a soft glow emanated. Liara followed it to find Garrus kneeling before an open weapons panel. Seeing him there brought a smile to her face. Despite his austere turian appearance, which one might misinterpret as ominous, deep down inside she knew he was just a big teddy bear. His heart was as big as he was tall.

"Having a problem?"

"Nothing my rifle couldn't fix. Hand it to me and I'll be done with it."

"I am sure I can be of better use. What's wrong?"

He gave a sigh. "The whole damn system is fried. Melted wires, scorched components. Whatever it was that hit the ship nearly tore this room apart." Garrus grew gravely quiet before he turned to her. "We're damn lucky. If this room had gone, the whole ship would have gone with it."

"What do you think it was?"

"I wish I knew, but I could guess…Shepard."

Liara leaned against the wall and lowered her head. "Has there been any word?"

"No. Communication's still down. We can't even communicate in-ship yet. Ashley has been giving Traynor a workout ferrying messages. Damn modern technology. Whatever happened to good old radio waves?" Garrus got to his feet and stood beside her. "How are you holding up?"

"I have seen better days," she said, smiling up at him.

"Haven't we all. How are your wounds healing?"

"Dr. Chakwas worked her magic. I am better than I was five hours ago."

"Damn modern technology."

Liara laughed. Who knew laughing in the midst of such potential tragedy could feel so good. And laughing with a friend she was glad to know was still around made it all the more meaningful.

Garrus touched her arm. "We'll find her, Liara. Don't give up hope yet."

"Shepard would not forgive me if I did. Is there anything I can do to help you here?"

"I wish I could say yes," he said, turning back to the work at hand. "But I think weapons are shot…no pun intended. If we get this baby up and running, we'll be limping back into port."

"If there's a port to return to."

"True. But if there is, we'll be running without weapons. There's not much either of us can do here, other than hope that Shepard did what she set out to."

"Destroy the Reapers…"

Garrus nodded. "And as long as we remain unmolested here on whatever forgotten planet we happen to be on, we can trust she did just that…whatever the outcome."

Their eyes met in the glow of Garrus's lantern. Unspoken between them was the outcome they both most feared. But within it was the hope they clung to. That Shepard had accomplished what she set out to—the Reapers destroyed, the Illusive Man gone or subdued, the galaxy safe. If Shepard walked out of the rubble and smoke alive, then praise be to the goddess. But if she did not, however hard that was to imagine, Liara would pronounce her bravery and the life she gave to save them all from one end of the galaxy to the next. Her great-great-grandchildren will tell the tales of how Shepard saved the galaxy from annihilation. The name Shepard will never be forgotten.

"There you are!"

The voice pulled Liara and Garrus's eyes away from each other. Samantha Traynor entered the battery room, a hand to her chest, breathing heavily.

"What is it?" Liara asked the question with a combination of apprehension and serenity.

"I've been looking all over for you. Tali has asked for your assistance in Engineering."

Liara let go the breath she had been holding. "Me?"

"No. Garrus. She said something about wanting his help with an adjustment on her suit…?" Traynor furrowed her brows, took another deep breath and shook her head. "Not sure what she meant by that, but she seemed rather in a hurry."

Traynor left the way she came and Liara turned curious eyes to Garrus. "Help with an adjustment on her suit?"

"Uh…I've been helping her with some…calibrations."

Liara nearly laughed. She had never seen the turian in such a fluster. If he could blush, his cheeks would have glowed a purplish hue.

"Hmm," she said with a knowing smile. "What sort of calibrations are those?"

Garrus looked away, but his deep-set and expressive eyes were alight with some recent memory, and on his harsh, angular turian features incapable of expressing emotion, she saw the ghost of a smile.

" _Delicate_ calibrations."

"I am sure." Before he left, Liara took Garrus's hand. "Thanks for the talk."

"Anytime. Pay it forward, if you can. Go to the AI Core. Joker's there with EDI. He could probably use your wisdom right now."

Liara sighed. "For what it is worth."

"It'll be worth a lot to him."

She let Garrus pass on his way to Engineering and contemplated what he asked of her. She had not been there when it happened. She had been in the Medical bay. But she had heard. She had Glyph as a reminder that things were not the same.

The last thing any of them knew was the Crucible had been armed, and the bright light of energy that had emanated from the Citadel before Admiral Hackett ordered them out of the system. Those messages were some of the last the Normandy ever received, and in a split second, they were rocketed out of the relay corridor. At least, it was the only explanation that made sense. They had been bumped right out of the corridor, tossed like a child's plaything through space. They could have collided with a particle no larger than a credit chit and been obliterated in milliseconds.

The truth of the matter didn't hit home right away. Not with Liara, or Joker. They exited the Normandy together once sure everyone made it through the ordeal in one piece. Wherever they came to rest, it was a beautiful place. Dual moons. Lush jungle. Breathable, floral-perfumed air. The beauty of the planet had been overwhelming. She and Joker had even smiled at each other under the light of a setting sun.

The Normandy was down. The Normandy was EDI. It was reasonable to think once they got the ship running again, EDI would be fine. But in the hours since the crash, neither she nor Glyph manifested themselves. The ship was essentially dead. What Tali and the others were attempting in Engineering amounted to restarting the heart of a body with no higher brain function. A crude description, but an honest one. As with Shepard, no one was saying it, but everyone was thinking it. EDI was gone, and there would be no bringing her back.

Why? What had happened on The Citadel?

Liara pulled herself and her straggling thoughts together to head toward the Medical Bay. She passed crewmember after crewmember running here and there, off to perform some job or another, working like madmen to get the ship off the ground. She wished to be with them, to be doing anything other than the task Garrus had given her. To acknowledge Joker's pain was to acknowledge her own, and she was not ready for that.

Passing the Medical Bay's spider web of cracked windows, she noticed Chakwas was no longer hunched over at her desk. Liara saw from her limited vantage point the doctor patching a wound on a crewmember's forehead. She recognized the man from the command center, but she had never spoken much to him.

The doors here had been forced open some hours ago. There was slight damage to the doctor's equipment—broken glass, fallen journals, instruments once imbued with mass effect fields used in wound care and surgery lay dead on the floor—but otherwise, all seemed in order.

"All done," Chakwas told the officer. "You can resume your duties."

"That's all you can do? My head is throbbing. Don't you have any medi-gel?"

"Don't be ridiculous," the doctor said, her voice tight and on edge. "You know nothing on this ship is working right now. Medi-gel dispensers are offline. Either use what you have on you or suck it up and get back to work."

"Yes—yes, ma'am." The officer passed Liara on his way out the door. "Watch out, Dr. T'Soni. Chakwas is on the war path."

Liara could hardly blame her. Undoubtedly, the doctor was under a great deal of pressure. However, it was beyond where Liara's concerns lay. Behind the troubled doctor, a faint light emanated from the AI Core. She could barely formulate the outline of Joker's form. Her heart went out to him, but she had to get past a frustrated Chakwas first.

"Is everything all right?"

"Oh, I'll be fine," the doctor said. "Don't pay him any mind. It's operating under the old laws of medicine that has me in a tizzy. I've lost my skill in the old ways, and my bedside manner in the process it would seem."

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

"I have the worst of it under control. The nastier injuries have been patched up. It's the few officers who can't seem to watch where they're going in the dark that's keeping me busy. Besides, I'm sure you have other things to worry about."

Liara turned away from her implied pity and changed the subject. She had a mission. She would see it through. "How is Jeff?"

Chakwas cast a glance behind her. "Hard to say. He won't speak to me. He's been standing over her as if mere strength-of-will could bring her back. We'll need him when the ship is operable again…if it ever will be…but I don't think he'll be of any use to us."

"Maybe I could try and talk to him." She said it, but not with any real conviction. She and Joker were in the same position, and she had no more hope than he did.

Chakwas nodded. "Maybe you could do some good where I couldn't. I'll wish you luck."

"Thank you," she said, forcing herself toward the AI Core. In this reality where there were no hard and fast answers to what the future held, could one continue to call it the AI Core if there was no AI?

Her feet took her past the threshold where soft, ghostly lantern light did not draw her. This was the room where it began. Not only EDI's new platform, but Liara's relationship with Shepard. This is where they acknowledged their feelings for each other. No, not this ship, but the one lying in pieces on an ice world known as Alchera. It had been so long since she remembered those times, buried as they were under years of battle and separation. Now, she was here again, only this time she was alone, and relationships that had once blossomed here lay as cold and inert as the ash that surely still fell on the surface of Earth.

Jeff held his head low, his shoulders slouched, his back hunched. He stood on legs that did not work well and which threatened to buckle beneath him, yet he held himself up with two strong hands matted to the table upon which EDI lay. The body was as Liara had first seen it after the mission on Mars—lifeless but not charred. The voice which had become synonymous with the Normandy, with Jeff, was silent.

Liara touched his arm ever so gently. She would not say the nickname everyone else used. Neither of them had much to joke about.

"Jeff…"

"Don't."

Liara let her hand drop. "I want to help."

"Then go away. I want to be left alone."

"Alone is the last thing any of us need. Right now, we need to be here for each other, as difficult as it may be."

He sighed, but there was an edge to his voice. "The last thing I want is your understanding and your pity. Just leave me alone…please."

Were it not that she understood completely the pain he felt, she might have turned and left him to wallow in it as he seemed so willing to do. But, she wouldn't. For Shepard's sake, and for EDI's.

"If you think I want to be anywhere else besides my quarters, curled up into a ball and yelling to the heavens about the injustice of what we have all had to sacrifice, then you do not know me that well."

His head bowed lower. One finger gently caressed the delicate shape of a jaw line. The light that once lived in the form they had come to know as EDI was gone.

"I've done everything I know to bring her back," Jeff said, his voice quiet like a whisper of fog over Lake Sirala. Flat and calm the lake was before the Reaper attack on Thessia. Now, its iridescence of eezo deposits likely ran with the blood of the asari, her people. "With every pulse of the drive core, her eyes should light up; she should look at me and know who I am…but…nothing. There's nothing." He turned to look at her over his shoulder, and in the lantern light, Liara caught the glimmer of wetness in his eyes. "She's not coming back, is she?"

How many times had she asked that question? To herself, but to no one else. She would not show the sorrow that beat at the door to her heart. They could not see the hole she was falling into. She was not that brave. But Jeff stood, showing her his pain as tangible as a wound to his flesh. And for a moment, she did not know if he were talking about EDI or Shepard. Perhaps his words were for them both.

"I—I do not know." She had no other answer for him, for tears had sprung in her own eyes. She lowered her head before the first one could slip down her cheek.

When his hand slipped into hers, it surprised her enough to look up. "I held out as long as I could," he said. "But the Admiral called the retreat."

Liara nodded. "I know. You did what you had to."

"I kept waiting, hoping Shepard would call right at the last minute like she'd done before. 'Joker, come in low and tight!' And I'd screech in just in time, she'd jump on and we'd be gone seconds before the blast wave hit."

Liara tried to smile. She would have done a better job trying to fit into Garrus's armor. "Like old times."

"Yeah," he said with a hint of the old Joker. But like all evanescent ghosts, they evaporate like vapor. "Times have changed."

She watched him let go of her hand and link his through EDI's dead fingers. Had she not done the same once for Shepard? Had she not gone to the ends of the galaxy to find what was left of her in the hopes of bringing her back? She could not expect any different of Jeff. If love is strong enough, one knows when to sacrifice self and when to let go. And in that, EDI was no different from Shepard, and Jeff no different from herself.

"Shepard once told me that EDI would defend her humanity to the death, that she was willing to risk non-functionality…for you." She watched him flinch. "If EDI is gone, then she did not go without purpose. I feel that as strongly as I know Shepard is…" Her voice broke and she turned away.

Behind her, she heard him sniff once, but she could not look back. It hurt too much to see grief encompass who he was. She walked back toward the threshold.

"We cannot win…"

Liara stopped inches from the doorway. "What?"

"' _We cannot win this war without sacrifice.'_ It's the last thing EDI told me before…" His voice fell like a rock down a deep chasm. She did not think he would find it again until he turned to her. The tears had dried on his cheeks. "She's the reason I left the Sol System when I did. It was her hand across the console and her words that gave me the strength to do what I had to do. I was so…so caught up in getting us out of there and outrunning the shockwave that I never saw when she…" He cleared his throat. "…when she slumped over. She never said anything else."

"Do not let her sacrifice be for nothing, Jeff," she said. "Do not let the name of EDI be forgotten in grief."

Joker squared his shoulders. "I wouldn't do that. She was the heartbeat of the Normandy. She was its breath of life."

His words were as a jolt of electricity to Liara, a jolt that radiated from her heart to the rest of her body. She had heard the words before almost as if they had been whispered in her ear. Lights flickered before her and the room came to life as it had once been. Behind Joker, EDI remained unmoving on the table. The comfortable hum of the Normandy's drive core filled the room and the rest of the ship. Fresh artificial air flowed.

But none of this did Liara see or feel or hear. The light that flickered became a beam, bright white and passing over. She could not see. The comfortable hum became a roar filling her ears. She could not hear. And air, artificial or otherwise, did not flow. She could not breathe. But she could feel. Pain pricked from head to toe. Bright white light revealed, in sputtering stops and starts, the image of tall, proud spires stretching out over the horizon, but broken and hunched like the frail backbones of old men.

Liara saw the Citadel and then she saw nothing.

"Hey, the ship's back up—" Joker began. He never finished. He watched as Liara's deep-sea blue eyes rolled back in her head and her legs crumbled beneath her. She fell in a heap on the floor long before he could stumble toward her.

"Dr. Chakwas!"

* * *

 **Hope you enjoyed this first chapter. Please leave a review to let me know what you think so far. This is a rather long story, so buckle in for the ride. And for those of you who are fans of my other series story, _Kirra's Journey_ , her continued story will return in 2018. I apologize for the long absence.**


	3. The Shape of ONE's Dreams

**MASS EFFECT: ONE**

* * *

 **The Shape of ONE's Dreams**

 **The Citadel – After Endgame**

 ** _S_** tinging. Something trickled into her eye and it stung like a million tiny needles. She would have squinted and rubbed at the affected organ were it not that her entire body felt as if she were floating in free space. Numb as a bicuspid on a dental hygienist's hot seat. In her prone state, she could feel nothing, and for a brief moment, she could see nothing. She blinked and the world, or what was left of it, came into clear focus.

Sparks. The distant crackle of flame. The smell of smoke. Fallen beams from overhead, illuminated only by an orange glow and brief flashes of light like white lightening. Worse than all of it was the deep and profound silence.

" _Where am I?"_

Her mind befuddled as it was, the answer was slow in coming. When it did, it came in flashes as brief as flashes of lightening. A jail cell. A crashed shuttle. Scared, dirty faces. Explosions. Blood. Death. So much death. The memories never fully coalesced. The answer she sought came to her out of the darkness.

"You're on the Citadel, dammit, in case you forgot; and by my count, we're damn lucky to still be alive."

The sound of that voice brought it all back in one white-hot flash. The bodies. The keepers. Being robbed of what she so rightly deserved. And the final moment. Husks by the thousands. Screeches in the millions. And then BOOM. She knew little after, except for that voice.

With a shuddered breath entirely unlike her, she muttered, "Bailey."

"Now, now," came the voice behind her. Commander Bailey, head of C-Sec. "I thought we were on a first name basis, Aria. Or should I revert to Miss T'Loak?"

She ignored him. Now was not the time for light banter, nor was she in the mood. Her body followed the waking of her mind as dangerously as shuttles piling into one another on the skyway when one comes to a sudden stop, and the effect was just as vicious. Pain snaked from the top of her skull all the way to the tips of her toes. It didn't take a drive core technician to realize the stinging in her eye had come from her own blood. She could feel it oozing across her cheek from a sharp pain at her temple only to puddle and drip at the bridge of her nose. Her vision, fuzzy both from nearsightedness and whatever injury she had sustained, watched the thick, purple liquid drip to the hard floor beneath her. It fell, labored, thick and sticky, in slow motion. A sign of greater problems than a bleeding head wound.

Aria pulled her hands (with arms that felt like two slabs of useless meat) up underneath her shoulders and attempted to push herself to a sitting position, but it proved to be a bad idea. A searing pain shot up her left leg.

"Don't move, Aria," Bailey said. "You're injured."

She crumbled back to the floor, trembling, and rested her forehead against its cold surface. His hands were on her, inspecting, touching, feeling.

"No shit." The curse didn't voice itself as she might have wished. All the vehemence of which she was capable did not flow into her words. Pain made her rasp. "What is it? Broken bone?"

"No…" Bailey sighed. Aria didn't like the sound of it. "A broken bone I could probably mend with the bit of medi-gel I have left, but this…"

"Tell me, goddammit!"

"You're leg has been impaled through. Piping from an upper structure or something…I don't know."

Aria strained to crane her neck and see, but the distant orange flame of light was not bright enough to see by. "How bad is it?"

Kneeling over her, his hand on her leg was like fire, but she wouldn't voice the pain. She sucked it up and bit her lower lip until she tasted blood.

With resignation, Bailey sat back on his haunches and breathed out one word. "Bad."

"Pull it out," Aria said, her voice shaky. She hated the sound of it.

" _No,"_ he demanded, concern for her coloring the tone of his voice. She realized she hated that too _._ "I can't tell how close to the bone it is, but I'm damned sure it nicked an artery. If it didn't sever one completely. I pull this thing out of your leg and you'll bleed out for sure."

"I don't care."

" _I do."_

Aria stamped an angry fist onto the hard floor. Gone was the shaky, pain filled voice of the injured. The voice of Aria T'Loak, leader of Omega, returned. "I _will not_ go out pinned to the floor of the Citadel like one of those nightclub asaris who know nothing of their place in the galaxy. I am Aria T'Loak. Now pull it out, you son of a bitch!"

"Alright! Alright! Just don't blame me when you're dead."

Her mind went to their short time together on the Citadel after everything went to hell, and she laughed (as best she could, anyway; it came out sounding like a raspy cough). "Why blame you when I can haunt you?"

She couldn't see his face or the sorrow she had etched there with her decision, but she could feel it in the pressure of his hand on her shoulder. "If you're the one person on the Citadel that haunts me once this is over, I think I can live with that."

And she could hear it in the sound of his voice. It wasn't just wrong, it was backward that she should even concern him so. She was Aria, "Pirate Queen" of the Terminus System and he was Commander Bailey, in charge of C-Sec. They were supposed to be oil and water. They weren't supposed to mix. But here at the end of all things, they somehow did.

Didn't mean Aria had to like it. "Just get it over with, Owen."

He laughed, albeit remorsefully. "Your wish is my command."

His hand left her shoulder. The pain that pierced through her leg when he gripped the pipe with both hands muddied her vision. She wished now that she had something to hold onto, something to bite down on. She didn't want to faint away like some wilting flower. Her body might be weak and fibrous like the stalk of a wildflower, but her psyche, her spirit was made of stronger material, strong than even that of Omega itself. But it had to be, hadn't it? The last several hours had borne out that truth, and it would seem, her strength. Too much had happened. Too much had changed since she won back Omega and chose to spend her last remaining days on the Citadel when she should have been where she belonged.

 _Damn you, Shepard_.

"Do it," she rasped.

A grunt of strength and then an ear-piercing scream. Before the blackness took her, Aria told herself the scream was not hers. It couldn't have been. She'd made it all this way without voicing a single twinge of pain or fear. No way would she cave this late in the game. The struggle had been too great. She wouldn't accept it not even as the darkness closed in and her memories of the last several hours came back as memories sometimes do—in the shape of dreams…

EEE

 **Before Endgame**

 ** _T_** echno music thrummed as constantly as the beat of her heart, pulsing her asari blood throughout her body. She had heard that as one became older (and wiser, so they say), one wished for peace and quiet, a life away from the beat of a busy life to a life filled with books or classical music, music meant to sooth the soul, stir the emotions like a good wine.

Asari who wished for such pleasantries were not made of the same ilk as Aria T'Loak.

Pulsing beats, thrumming music, the aroma of libations far headier than good wine—these are what soothed her soul and stirred her emotions. There was but one thing lacking here on the Citadel.

Control.

This was not her home. On Omega she controlled everything. Here on the Citadel, things were a mite different. What little control she did have as leader of an underworld organization was hampered by the threat of what Shepard called Reapers. Tendrils of an unknown fear had slowly worked its way into every lifeform that made residence upon the station's massive arms, and even into those who had only come to visit. She saw it in the eyes of every person who walked through the doors of Purgatory, the Citadel's newest nightclub. They came in droves just to fight off the fear with a few drinks and a good time. Some of them sat at round tables, discussing what was to come, like that group of turians in the corner. Others came to lose themselves in alcohol while they shared their horror stories from the battlefield or from their homeworld, and still others chose to lose themselves in the beat of the music, in the pounding of feat on the dance floor.

Aria did not share in their collective anxiety. While she may have no more control over the fight for the galaxy than she had here over the inhabitants of the Citadel, she had confidence Shepard would accomplish what she set out to do. If the Reapers were truly the threat she claimed, Shepard would stop at nothing to see them put down. Aria had already seen what Shepard was capable of once she set her mind to a course of action. Shepard had proved herself on Omega, and she would prove herself with the Reapers, whatever the sacrifice. Of that, Aria was damned positive. What she didn't always approve of were her methods. She was too much of a goodie-two-shoes, not willing to make the hard choices, the ones that hurt. Sometimes it involved going contradictory from the norm; going a little…renegade, so to speak. That was Aria's style, not Shepard's.

Whatever her choice, there was one thing Aria was sure of. The Reapers would soon be toast. She had nothing to fear. Nor did Omega.

A scantily clad server descended the steps toward her with a dark-colored drink on a serving platter. Aria eyed it and the human female who's communicator kept nervously pinging. She brought a hand to her ear.

"Look, I can't talk right now," she said hastily into her communicator. There were tears in her eyes. "No, I haven't heard from her in hours. As soon as I do, I'll let you know. I gotta go." She looked apologetically at Aria and thrust the platter her way. "I'm sorry, ma'am."

Aria ignored her apology. The anxiety that came off her was as offensive as body odor. "I didn't order that."

The girl frowned. "No? The bartender said—"

"I don't care what the bartender said. I didn't order it."

"I did," came a voice from somewhere behind the server. She moved, taking the platter with her, in time for Aria to see the head of C-Sec stepping purposefully her way. He took the dark drink from the server's platter, thanked and dismissed her.

"Miss T'Loak," he said, standing before her with an artfully crafted grin. "How are you this evening?"

Aria rolled her eyes and did her best to stifle a sigh. "Commander Bailey. I should have known. Only a human C-Sec officer would order a Scotch on the rocks."

He chuckled and raised his glass to her, then settled himself beside her on the couch she had commandeered in her little corner of Purgatory. "It's the drink of Kings."

His move was decisive, meant to test her mettle. Aria endured it with a smirk. "I don't recall inviting you to sit."

"And I don't recall inviting you onto my space station. So, I guess we're even."

"Yes, it would appear we are. So says the Asari Counsel."

"Oh, trust me. I heard all about your little…maneuver."

Aria smiled, but only tolerantly. "What do you want with me, Commander? I'm guessing you didn't come here for a drink and a little conversation."

Bailey looked about the nightclub, his eyes settling upon the bleary drunks and the weary souls before returning his gaze to her. "Well, you never know, Miss T'Loak. A little drink, a little conversation never hurt anybody." He leaned in and gave her a convoluted grin that tested her mettle all the more. "Maybe we could even take a spin on the dance floor."

She returned his grin, but her lips were tight. "I'd rather wrestle a Krogan."

Bailey threw back his head and overwhelmed the thrumming music with a spirited laugh. "Having you around ought to throw a little excitement into my shift. Not that I don't already have enough excitement to keep a politician flustered for a week…but you're right, Miss T'Loak. I do want something from you."

"Now we get to it. What might that be? Would you like to ship me back to Omega?"

"It's a thought. You've been on my shit list since you smuggled yourself and your goons onto my station. I've got enough on my hands without your…how should I say it?... _esteemed_ presence. After the situation with Sederis, I'd have every right to kick your sweet little asari ass off the Citadel."

"I'm still not pleased with how it was handled, but it worked out in the end. You should be happy. Instead, you'd like to have me ejected into space. Not very civil of you, _Commander._ "

"Nobody ever said I was a 'civil' kind of guy. No, as much as I'd like to remove you from the sight of every decent folk on this station—"

Aria laughed. "Decent folk? On the Citadel?"

"—I can't," Bailey finished. "The Citadel is on lock down. Nobody goes in or out."

Aria's bemused smile faded like the light at dusk. The Citadel locked down? The thought, and its implied reasons, brought with it the first unsettling knot of anxiety to her gut. She felt it like the sting of an omni-blade.

Aria raised an eyebrow. "If I want out, I'll get out."

She had hoped for a frown or at the very least a returned threat, but Bailey surprised her with another chuckle. "Oh, I'm sure you'll try, but you're missing the point here, Miss T'Loak."

Missing? Aria T'Loak missed nothing, except for the direction of Bailey's conversation. "And what would that be?"

"That the Council is finally taking the Reaper threat seriously. Believe it or not, I wasn't sent here to lock you up."

She was the one who ended up frowning. "The Council sent you to me? Why?"

"Personally, I think your presence here is making an already tense situation worse, but _they_ want your help."

"For what?"

Bailey shuffled in his seat, crossed his legs, uncrossed them. Aria knew a troubled man when she saw one. The knot in her gut grew.

"Despite your reputation, Miss T'Loak," Bailey began, "the people not only fear you, they look up to you. Honestly, I think they're crazy after what you tried to pull with Sederis, but it's not my call. Since the events on Omega, you've proven resourceful in a tight spot. And right now, the Citadel is in a tight spot."

Bailey looked away, considered his words, and downed the rest of his drink in one shot. When he spoke again, his voice could barely be heard above the music.

"Long-range scanners have detected several Reaper-sized ships. Based on their trajectory, the Council is surmising that a few ships have broken from their attack on Earth and are heading this way. The reason is unclear, but they'll be here in a couple hours."

It had been many long years since she might have considered herself among the common people. She loathed the anxious fear that had begun to take residence within her. It was a commoner's worry, not for one such as herself. She had faced more grievous dangers than this and lived to tell the tale…spun in her own way, of course. This was not the same. On Omega, she had the resources and she had the people. There she could fight. What did she have here besides her own ship and her own select handful of faithful warriors? She couldn't fight an entire Reaper invasion on her own, not here.

"How long have they known?" she asked, her voice tight.

"I wish I could say."

Blue fingers snatched Bailey's collar and pulled him close. He didn't seem to fear her, but he should. When her eyes and the tips of her fingers glowed an ethereal blue, especially at this close range, the snuffing of a life was easy.

"And just when were they planning on telling _me?_ "

One thing was certain—she had just knocked that smug smile from his face. He grimaced under her biotic grip. "I wouldn't have told you a damn thing but for the Council. You deserve to face your fate along with the rest of us."

Aria tossed him back onto the couch. "What does the Council think I am? Their 'break-glass-in-case-of-emergency' fallback? I am not at anyone's beck and call, least of all the Council's. And you can tell them I said so."

Rising defiantly to her feet, Aria brought a hand to her ear. "Bray, get the ship prepped and the men ready. We leave in fifteen."

The voice on the other end of the comm came back, "But, I thought—"

"Now, Bray! The Citadel has just become an uncomfortable place to be."

Aria turned to leave Purgatory, her docile adjutant, Sheerk, at her side.

"Miss T'Loak, before you go," said Bailey.

She stopped, but she refused to look back. Commander Bailey would not see the same fear that emanated from the eyes of military officers all the way down to the dispossessed individual of a decimated homeworld reflected in her own eyes.

"What?" Were she a snake, the one solitary word would have stung as venom.

"I was told to tell you that the Council offered you _an olive branch_." He spoke the last words with a grimace, assuring she knew exactly what he thought of the Council's leniency with regard to the smuggling of herself onto the Citadel. "But I was also told to make sure you understand the olive branch can be retracted. I'm not here to judge. You do what you want, but the Council is dead serious. Turn your back on them, Miss T'Loak, and they _will_ turn their back on you."

Aria smiled. Bailey had no idea how far back her connection to Councilor Tevos went. "The Council scares me no more than you do."

"Don't say I didn't warn you."

Aria marched from Purgatory, her confidence secure. Risking one last glance in Bailey's direction as she left the nightclub shattered it in seconds. As the doors slid closed, she watched him nod to an officer at the other end of the club.

EEE

 ** _W_** hen the lift doors opened onto the docking bay, Bray was waiting on the other side. Aria gave him a cursory glance, dismissing the curious and yet nervous look in his four black eyes. These weren't emotions just anyone could see. She had known Bray for many years. He had fought at her side for as long as he could probably remember, and he had never been especially expressive. To see nervousness now was a bad sign.

Batarians, as a species, lacked the capacity for many emotive functions, save for perhaps anger and hatred. Yet, they loved and laughed as well as any other species. To physically emote in their facial features just wasn't a part of their makeup. Whether this was the general rule with batarians or a part of their nature or cultural heritage, Aria did not know. Her studies into different species never went any further than learning the right place to bury a bullet. Though, after years of working with batarians, she'd concluded that their lack of emotional expression was the reason humans and batarians didn't mix. One emoted too much and the other, not enough. (Humans emoted even in their dreams. She knew. She'd spent the night with several of them.) It was a good thing her species as a whole existed. While asari do not meld minds with just anyone, they have an exceptional ability to comprehend the nature of a species, and it helps that most asari are knowledgeable in the ways of diplomacy. Humans and batarians would have wiped each other out centuries ago were it not for her kind.

Today, Aria was glad for Bray's lack of physical emotion. She didn't have time to contemplate his fears. She had cleaned out her few personal effects from her temporary home on the Citadel, and sent a quick vid-message to Tevos, thanking her for her hospitality and continued support. Her focus now had to be on getting to the docks, to her ship. They had little time to evacuate this imminent floating graveyard, and she had a feeling it wasn't going to be easy.

"What's going on?" Bray asked, belying his seeming lack of emotion with three words.

"Reapers have invaded the galaxy. Haven't you heard?" She asked the question as she passed him and others along the corridor. To her left was an impromptu wall memorial of the missing and the dead. It would soon serve as a monument to the people stuck on the Citadel when the Reapers came calling, if it survived at all.

"Yeah, I've heard, but what's the rush? Grizz and I were in the middle of a sweet deal when you called. You scared the buyer off! What the hell's going on with the Citadel?"

Aria could almost hear his mind cranking behind her as she marched forward. Another thing about batarians; they were good fighters and loyal to a fault, but sometimes, they were a little slow on the uptake. She came to a sudden stop and faced him. Behind her, the full view of the Citadel's port, its arms and the space beyond it displayed through a long bank of windows.

"What happened the first time the Reapers came?" Aria asked, not concerned with the number of people around them who could hear their conversation perfectly.

Bray looked away, his four eyes searching the space behind her as though searching for the answer. "They came here. At least, one of them did."

Heads snapped in their direction, eyes widened, but Aria kept talking. Time to put the Council, who needed her so much, on their toes. "Right. I should have known better than to come here in the first place. The Citadel served a useful purpose to the one Reaper then, and it apparently serves another purpose to the rest of them today. They are on their way here now."

Conversations halted. A murmur of worried voices reached her ears. Three-fingered turian fists clenched. The bulbous eyes of salarians twitched anxiously back and forth. Somewhere, a human woman began to cry. Aria smiled.

"They—they're coming here?"

"Yes, and that's why we're leaving. Where's the rest of the crew?"

"I told them to meet me at the dock," he said, turning his attention to the frightened people who were scattering to gather their family and their things and high tail it off the Citadel. "But what about these people?"

If, in the midst of the panic she had just started, she could have slapped Bray on his rumpled forehead, she would have. Aria refused to hear the placations of the Council coming from his mouth too. She grabbed him by the collar and shook him. "Where is your family?"

"On Omega," he answered, an impossible expression of doubt clouding his features.

"Where they are safe. That's where we need to be." She released his collar with a purposeful shove. "Now, let's go!"

Turning, she left him behind to make his choice. She knew he would follow like a faithful varren pup. She didn't have to question his loyalty or where his heart lay. Bray was at her side when the lift that descended to the dock opened at her approach and he was still there when the doors closed; he was with her one hundred percent, whatever his misgivings.

The walk to her ship wasn't particularly long, but it felt like a long distance marathon. She and her men would be in her ship and out of the system long before the Reapers reared their ugly, insectile heads. In fact, they were nearly there. A few more steps and—

From around the corner came a turian she knew well. Grizz was his name and by the drooping of his mandibles, Aria knew something was very wrong.

"What is it?" The anxiety she had worked so hard to keep at bay, came creeping back in the tone of her voice.

Grizz threw a thumb over his shoulder, his beady little eyes as wide as saucers. "You're gonna have to see for yourself."

Pushing Grizz aside and rounding the corner, Aria froze. She had heard humans refer to shock as blanching, as though one could drain of color. In cases of extreme emotion, an asari was not known to discolor, but to deepen in hue. Aria's cheeks, all the way down to her upper chest had inflamed to a deep purple and the markings on her face darkened to the color of midnight. Were she human, her blood might have boiled, the ensuing inferno coming from her in waves of heat like an inferno. But this asari's blood ran cold as ice.

There, in the very slip her ship had docked only days ago, was an empty berth. Her ship was nowhere to be found.

EEE

 ** _A_** nother human phraseology: "pull the wool over one's eyes." Humans had a host of strange sayings that baffled most other species, but Aria had learned some of them over the years. This one came from a time very early in human history when their rulers wore woolen wigs as a symbol of status. A ridiculous fashion trend she found laughable, given the images it brought to mind. The saying that had derived from it (from the idea of placing the wig incorrectly upon one's head), however, was not so laughable. Not when it happens to you.

The Council had deceived her. Councilor Tevos had given Aria a free pass onto the Citadel only to make her think she was safe here. They had to have known what was coming all along. To think she had thanked Tevos for her help!

An ethereal blue glow of indignation ignited from Aria's balled fists. _"Where is my ship?"_

Grizz's shaky voice came from behind. "That's what we're trying to find out. I dispatched the rest of the men to search the entire port."

Aria growled beneath her breath. "Waste of time. Call them back."

"But—"

A distant call of gunfire sounded before Grizz could finish his rebuttal. It froze the three of them in place.

"What the hell?" Grizz breathed. "That's the direction I sent the rest of the men. You don't think—"

"I think we've got worse problems than a missing ship," the batarian said over Aria's right shoulder. "Let's move!"

Aria had no intention of moving. The Council took her ship and the sight of approaching C-Sec officers (armed to the teeth, she might add) meant they also intended to take her. A very bold move, one she planned to answer. The blue glow at her fists soon encompassed her entire body. From head to toe, she became a powerhouse of kinetic energy.

As Bray and Grizz armed themselves and ran for cover, a biotic bolt hit the first officer through the entry to Aria's docking bay. It threw him back several feet. Another lifted a female officer off her feet and rocketed her into a wall. A third volley sent a turian over the side of the slip with a scream, but there was no time for a fourth. Aria raised her shields in time for the biting blast of a rocket launcher. Her world went white for a split second and the next thing she knew, she was on the ground at least three feet behind Bray and Grizz.

"Aria!" she heard Bray call over the familiar sound of his pistol fire. "Get to cover!"

 _Cover, my ass!_ She wasn't about to hide from the Council's little army. She had fought Reaper-controlled Adjutants and survived, fought Cerberus and survived. What were a couple of determined Citadel security officers? Gaining her feet, she stood before a torrent of weapons fire, most of them directed at Bray and Grizz who were returning with equal ferocity. The rapid fire of Grizz's assault rifle and the pop-pop of Bray's dual-wielded pistols were but background music to the regeneration of her shields. She took several hits, but they hardly weakened the barrier she had erected. More and more C-Sec officers were pouring through the entry way on the other side of the docking bay.

The Council had more than turned their back on her. They wanted her dead. And for what? Wanting to save herself and her men from a Reaper attack? Or because she had no interest in helping them to save their own asses? Far in the back of her mind, Aria wondered if the rest of her men were dead or incapacitated. Forefront, however, was the sight of about fifteen to twenty C-Sec officers all with their guns trained on three people from Omega. Not just any three people, either. Three of the most powerful. This wasn't a shakedown, and Aria hadn't planned on going out in a blaze of glory…not today, anyway!

Bray and Grizz weren't going to last under this barrage forever. Hell, they weren't going to last five minutes. They were nearly out of ammo. It was going to take one decisive hit to knock their enemy a blow they couldn't recover from. Aria clenched her teeth and pulled in every reserve of power she had left. It lit her up like a blue bonfire and caught the attention of each C-Sec officer in range. Each pull of the enemy's trigger cracked her barrier, but Aria ignored it. She looked down upon her enemy like a vengeful god, each step forward decisive and intentional, drawing their fire away from Bray and Grizz as though she were a black hole. She heard them screaming for her to get down, to take cover, but she had to ignore it just as she had to ignore the warning in her mind, the one that told her this one move would sap her completely and when she was done, she was done.

"Go!" she screamed to her men as she passed them. "Go now!"

She imagined they looked at each other once, surmised in one last second what her plan was, then ran for the safety of the elevator. No more thought did she give to their presence. Harnessing all her power as though on a spring-loaded trigger, Aria marched toward the C-Sec officers, some of whom began to run in fear. This was going to hurt.

Thrusting out her arms, Aria released her power in a blinding flare. From her fingertips, it shot forth in a straight line, but it was bigger than a rocket, and the ensuing biotic explosion more terrifying than a 34-A mech run amok. More than a few of the officers at the center of the explosion were torn to pieces, while others were thrown like matchsticks against crates and docking bolts. A flare of biotic power can hurt like a bitch, but the C-Sec officers weren't the only ones to suffer from its effects. Her power spent, Aria's legs crumbled beneath her. She fell back to the hard floor with a smack. A few minutes to regain her strength would be all she needed, enough to get away, find another ship. She was powerless, defenseless and she might even have to crawl back inside the lift, but it didn't matter. C-Sec would need just as long to regroup.

Aria forced her body to move. She rolled over onto her belly only to see Grizz and Bray breaking from the cover of the corridor toward the lift. They were coming toward her, reaching out to her.

" _NO!_ "

She tried to scream it, but it came out as nothing more than a breath. Each one took an arm and tried to pull her to safety. She couldn't let them. Out in the open, they were mere fodder for the security officers left over after the wake of her attack.

"Let go of me," she demanded with what strength she had left. "Get out of here!"

"Not until we get you to safety."

It was the last thing she heard Bray say before her ears began to ring with the sound of gunfire from behind. Her eyes caught sight of opened lift doors and C-Sec officers swarming from within. There was a return fire, the pop-pop of a pistol. Automatic fire followed it seconds after, then stopped. The weight of a body slammed over her. Grizz! Marching feet. Bray let go of her arm. The sound of his pistol once more, and then he too fell beside her. Aria couldn't cry out. She couldn't scream. She could hardly move. The marching feet surrounded her and many pointed weapons swam before her eyes.

"Go ahead," she whispered. "Do it."

The last thing she remembered was the butt of a rifle.

EEE

 ** _V_** oices buzzing, arguing in her ear. They sounded both far away and close by at the same time, like listening to a conversation over the constant waves of the seashore. At first, she couldn't understand them, but as the waves died down, or as her consciousness slowly returned, the voices became clear, distinct. One of them was the voice of a turian.

"We don't have time to argue over her rights!"

"Sparatus is correct," came the voice of a similarly inclined salarian. "Aria T'Loak is no more than a common criminal. Letting her escape before the rest of us would be like releasing that terrorist Balak… _or Saren!"_

The third voice spoke through tight lips, baring her teeth, belying a calm voice of reason. "Aria T'Loak might be many things, but she is no _Saren Arterius_. We have no more right to hold her here than we do any other sentient being on this station."

"We have more right than most," Valern, the salarian councilor said. "She's already whipped up a frenzy out there. People are panicking. We're getting reports of thousands of injuries, fights out in the streets, and looting…all because she deliberately opened her mouth about the Reapers! _This_ will be how she pays for the damage she's caused."

Tevos's calm voice of reason dropped an octave. "The damage to the Citadel or to your reputation?"

Though she hadn't fully regained consciousness enough to open her eyes, Aria smiled as one might smile in a dream.

"Enough!" Heavy turian feet stomped close by. "Every second we spend arguing over _her_ is every second closer the Reapers advance."

Beneath her, Aria felt only the hard floor. She wasn't on the docks anymore, but neither was she on either arm of the Wards. She didn't hear the comforting thrum of music or the steady vroom of passing skycars. She needed those sounds like a volus needs his pressure suit. It's what made her focus on the stomping turian feet. Their pacing was like the beat of a song, and its beat pulled her from the slumber of unconsciousness. Her senses came alive. She heard everything: the rhythmic push of artificial air into the room (a room most likely somewhere on the Presidium), the salarian's wildly beating heart, and the thud of turian feet. They were close. She could feel his nearness, and more importantly, her hands and feet lacked restraint.

They weren't going to hold her here…not if Aria T'Loak had anything to say about it.

Sparatus was passing before her, and by the sound of it, his back was to her. "We either need to get off this station or close the arm—"

Aria took the perfect moment without thinking. Kicking out her legs, she caught the Turian's in her own and pivoted her hips. Before he could finish speaking, Sparatus was face down on the ground with Aria's elbow braced at the back of his skull and one hand gripping his spindly cranial crest.

Tevos ran toward her, arms outstretched. "Aria, no!"

"Get back or I'll snap his neck!" The turian beneath her breathed, but he didn't budge one inch, vulnerable as he was.

"You don't have to do this, Aria. This is not the time to be—"

"Not the time? You lie to me, you deceive me, and then you take away my freedom. Don't presume to tell me anything! I want my men and I want my ship returned to me _now!"_

The salarian councilor stepped forward. "You are in no position to demand a thing of the Council."

In any other situation, Aria might have laughed. Salarians were great tacticians. The very reason she employed so many of them. But this salarian, Valern, was not so great. He gave himself away in the only way a salarian could—with his big, black eyes. They flitted upward briefly and he gave the game away in an instant. The problem, the reason Aria didn't laugh in the salarian's face, was that she hadn't detected any movement behind her until it was too late. She knew less than a second before the blow came, and that wasn't enough time for anyone to react. As her vision swam before her eyes like water in a fishbowl, a memory surfaced of Shepard seemingly flitting from one control panel to another deep in the bowels of Omega. Aria groaned. If anyone could have reacted in time, it would be Shepard. Not her. She felt herself being lifted from the turian's back like a sack of useless equipment, hating herself for her lack of foresight and damning Shepard not for the first time that day.

The blow dealt to the back of her head wasn't as thought-obliterating as the one to her face, however long ago that had been. Aria's consciousness returned long enough to sense the restraints being placed on her wrists, restraints with just the right amount of dampener to keep her from using her biotics as she had on the dock.

She was on her knees, a place of subservience. It was a place she had not known in a very long time and it felt as cold as the blackness of space.

Heavy turian hands found their way under her arms and pulled her to her feet. She pulled against them and fought because not fighting was giving up. Not fighting was the same as acquiescing. She gave voice to her defiance with a scream that was also a growl. Aria T'Loak did not acquiesce to anyone!

Before her stood the face of the Citadel Council, the face everyone on the Citadel accepted without question. The only face Aria acknowledged was that of Tevos, but even her face had changed into one of resignation. She knew then her fate was sealed.

The turian councilor named Sparatus huffed and rubbed the back of his head. "Aria T'Loak, you are under arrest for illegally immigrating onto the Citadel—"

"I was given clearance!"

"That clearance has been revoked," Valern said with one pointed finger in her direction.

Sparatus ignored them both. "You are also charged with causing mass panic, _and_ for physically assaulting a councilmember! How do you answer those charges?"

Aria gave him a defiant smile. "Guilty."

The turian councilor threw his hands in the air. "I say we lock her up and leave her to her fate."

"No," Tevos said. Aria still detected a note of resignation in her voice, but in her eyes gleamed a spark of the assertive asari she knew. "You're going to get what you asked for. The two of you brought about this situation against my expressed will, so now you have to deal with it." Tevos turned her attention to Aria. "We need your help. These two thought it best to shackle you instead of asking outright. This is _not_ the way I wanted things to play out."

"Two of my best men are dead because of the _way things played out_. I don't give a shit what you want. If the three of you end up as husks or adjutants or whatever the hell their called, it will be what you deserve."

"Aria T'Loak, listen to what I have to say!"

The Asari councilmember's cheeks deepened in hue and her voice took on a level of command Aria had not heard in many years. Tevos had not always been a Citadel councilor. Buried under the face of diplomacy she showed to the world was an assertive woman who had more than her share of battle scars. There were very few people still alive who knew those scars existed beneath that neck to toes dress Tevos wore, but Aria knew. She knew those scars intimately…and she also knew the tone Tevos had taken with her. It meant 'shut up and listen. I'm in command now.'

Aria shut up and listened, but only because of their shared history. She kept her ear to the ground, though, waiting for the winds of change that would see her out of this place and back home to Omega, where if her luck held out, she would make the last stand for life in the galaxy.

A deep and slow sigh, Tevos dared to take two steps toward her. "Your man, the batarian, is not dead. He took several hits but we were able to repair him. The other was not so lucky, but the batarian is in the brig awaiting your decision."

Aria narrowed her eyes. The question was there, though she didn't voice it. She allowed Tevos to continue.

"Your ship has been docked near the bay of the Destiny Ascension."

Sparatus began, "Are you crazy? You can't—"

Tevos held up one hand, silencing him without a word, and then turned her attention back to Aria. "We need your help. The Citadel must maintain a working government. With the Destiny Ascension and all other warships gone to battle, the only viable ship is yours. Once we're gone, we can close the arms of the Citadel to protect the people from the impending attack."

Aria smirked. "You don't need me. You just need my ship. When you're gone you'll make sure I'm locked up nice and tight next to Bray, won't you?"

"No," Tevos said, her eyes never breaking their hold of Aria's. "We need you. _I need you._ You're the only one who can get us into the only other impenetrable stronghold in the galaxy—Omega." For the first time since the two had seen each other on the Citadel, Tevos smiled. "I need a pilot and I heard you're the best one in the galaxy."

She hadn't heard those words in a long time. It was the first time they met. Tevos needed a quick getaway and Aria needed the extra credits. Their "working relationship" had only grown over the years. Back then, when they were younger, they had the time and freedom to pursue a relationship…between other endeavors. Time and positions of command pulled them away from each other and hardened them in each their own way. The life of a matriarch had a way of changing an asari, making her see the world and the people around her in a different way. Aria always looked for what she could get out of another. Tevos, on the other hand, had always looked for the good in others and wanted to help in any way she could. A far cry from the asari she had once been when she and Aria roamed the galaxy together. By the smile on her face, it would seem a spark of the asari maiden still lived deep in the heart of the councilor. Aria had always found it hard to resist her smile.

Unlike that human phrase, "absence makes the heart grow fonder," absence also had a tendency to make the heart grow colder. Her smile didn't hold as much sway over her heart as it once had, especially once she had been betrayed.

Aria didn't flinch. "You need a pilot? Then, you'd best start looking for one from amongst your own fleet. Last time I looked, I don't work for the council. If you're not willing to release me and return my ship, as far as I'm concerned, we can all die together on the Citadel."

Tevos's smile wilted like a dying flower, and as a pin prick to tender flesh, Aria felt it, but she buried it under her hatred.

"Now do you see?" Valern said. "I told you she can't be trusted."

The turian councilor pointed to the C-Sec officers. "Take her to the brig!"

Before they could pull at her arms or drag her away, Tevos touched one hand to Aria's temple, her face a mask of shattered hopes. "I'm sorry. I tried."

The C-Sec officers pulled and Aria went with them willingly. With dampeners subduing her natural biotic powers, she had no other choice. She had no weapon, and against two hulking turians, no strength either. A part of her wished for the sight of Nyreen to appear out of nowhere and win the day, but she was gone. She did what Aria could not; she gave her life for what she believed in.

Aria didn't need saving, anyway. She had what she needed—the location of her ship. She just needed to find a way out of Citadel control. As much as they would like to think they had the upper hand where security and defense was concerned, the Citadel wasn't as impenetrable as they thought. Aria knew a few loopholes, and they would soon come in handy.

She gave one hard look over her shoulder into the councilor's soft eyes. Hours would pass like lifetimes before Aria saw her again.

* * *

 **Aria was so much fun to write. I really got into shaping her character as the story went along. Please let me know if you enjoyed this chapter. And thanks to those of you who've followed. I appreciate it.**

 **Keep an eye to the _Foreword_ for any future updates or changes that my take place to the story, as well as synopsis to pending chapters. Thanks for reading.**


	4. LondONEarth

**MASS EFFECT: ONE**

* * *

"Human history is written in a litany of bloodshed…"

~Legion~

* * *

 **LondONEarth**

 **Earth, London - Before Endgame**

 ** _D_** efine "psychotic."

First glance in the dictionary will read: "relating to, marked by or affected with _psychosis."_

No shit. But, if you dig a little deeper, try a few other lexicons, you get this: "having a very serious mental illness that makes you act strangely or believe things that are not true."

Eh, that one's a little better, but it still doesn't hit the mark. How about this one? "Intensely upset, anxious or angry; crazy; exhibits extreme emotion or behavior." Hits the mark, but not the bullseye.

Found this one on the extranet: "Psychosis is an abnormal condition of the mind that involves a 'loss of contact with reality.' People experiencing psychosis may exhibit personality changes and thought disorder. Depending on its severity, this may be accompanied by unusual or bizarre behavior, as well as difficulty with social interaction and impairment in carrying out daily life activities."

Everyone of those points touch upon segments of her life, at different moments in time. Being locked in a cage behind a one-way mirror definitely has a way of making one lose contact with reality. Drugged, tortured, made to kill—if that doesn't change your personality or disorder your thoughts, nothing else will.

Hell, maybe there was someone out there who went through worse than what she did growing up; hardened them, made them cold, unfeeling. The galaxy is full of cutthroats, killers, sadists, people who enjoy watching someone burn to death the way regular folk like watching Blasto films. Who knows what those nutbags went through to make them who they are. But there aren't too many out there with as diverse a rap sheet: gangbanger, cultist, pirate, vandal…murderer.

And social interaction? Back in the day, she'd have just as soon shoot you as look at you. Her favorite form of social interaction had absolutely nothing to do with talking. As long as he, _or she,_ knew where to put it.

So yeah, she's unusual. She's bizarre. The tattoos covering every visible space of skin are a testament to it, and to every good or shitty thing that had ever happened to turn her into the unusual, bizarre woman one saw today.

Though, there is one line of thought within that medical definition so big a load of bullshit she could smell it on this side of her timeline: "…impairment in carrying out daily life activities."

Jack, Subject Zero, the Psychotic Biotic, _Bitch…_ whatever you like to call her—if 'daily life activities' include decimating your enemies on the battlefield, she harbored no such impairment.

In fact— _ZAP_ —standing on the rubble of what used to be a gamers' paradise, one of the best arcade houses in South London to hear the tale, Jack blasted back a wave of oncoming husks. Not one of the bastards got back up. No impairment there!

Nevertheless, if one were to stand the old Jack, the one who had escaped the horrors of the Teltin Facility and the subsequent abuse by slavers, next to the person she was today, one might question whether they were the same person. But Jack knew different. The terrified, angry girl still lived inside. Like dirt in a fox's den, she would always be there, but Jack covered her, held her where no one else could ever hurt her.

Running across rubble and bodies, Jack stationed herself on the remains of an arcade game, the kind with a comfy chair you can play skycar races in, and raised her hands. Ahead of her, a troop of salarians took their station behind a crumbled wall in preparation for an attack of cannibals and husks. Easy targets. Still, she brought her biotic powers to bare and raised the barrier to protect the salarians. To either side of her stood two of her best students—Prangley and Rodriguez. They weren't just her students. They were her kids. She protected them, made sure no harm came to them, as she protected her inner kid. She would die to keep them safe.

Yeah, she had changed. She wasn't the same mindless bitch who acted on emotion or upon every whim or wave of thought that came her way. She was still Jack, the Psychotic Biotic, but she was different. And there was a reason for it—one name, Shepard.

Shepard was the one to start the wheels of change in Jack, and when Shepard handed the wheel back, Jack kept it spinning with the help of her students, her kids. Shepard didn't hesitate to take on the Reapers back when nobody cared or believed, and she wasn't hesitating to take them on now that they were overrun. If only for Shepard's sake and the sake of her kids, Jack would be damned before she let the sons-a-bitches win the day. This was their galaxy now!

Ahead, the STG unit handled the wave of cannibals and husks with salarian finesse. Their scorpion pistols did the work one of her shockwaves would have accomplished in seconds, only theirs involved a lot more explosions and gore. The sight of a husk splattering into many tiny pieces had a way of making Jack smile. But husks weren't their only problem.

"Rodriguez! Left!"

Two shielded Marauders, Reaper abominations that used to be turian soldiers, were attempting to outflank them. That left Ensign Rodriguez, a dark-haired woman still wet behind the ears but who continued to prove herself in battle, out in the open. While good with front line attacks, a Marauder's greatest weapon was infiltration, and that's what they were attempting to do. Penetrate their barrier to take out its organic power source—Jack.

Jack saw two ways to take them out in her mind's eyes as she watched the things hopping over debris and charred vehicles, but Rodriguez had frozen. She turned to Jack with wide eyes, her training vanishing in an instant of fear. What she needed was a swift kick in the ass and nobody knew how to do it better than her mentor.

"Don't look at me, dammit!" Jack screamed above the roar of a distant Reaper. "You know what to do. Look those bastards in the eye and show'em who's boss! _"_

Rodriguez had no time for thought, and as much as Jack wanted to help, she couldn't let go of the barrier, couldn't drop their defenses. Nor would she. They had a mission to accomplish. Rodriguez had to make a decision. Stand there and die in fear, or stand up to her fear and beat its ass into the ground.

"Do it now! Don't think!"

Rodriguez turned. The Marauders were closing in fast. "Hesitation will kill you faster than a bullet," Jack always told them. Thank blind luck or God or whatever, Rodriguez killed her hesitation before it had a chance to kill her. Her omni-tool blinked on, shocking one of the bastards with overload, effectively killing his shields, making him vulnerable. One well-placed sniper shot from one of the STG agents brought it to the ground. The other, Rodriguez warped hard enough to knock it back several feet. Three shots, center mass, pushed it back the rest of the way, burying it behind a heap of rubble.

This time, Rodriguez turned to her with a smile. "I did it!"

No time for congratulations. "Keep your guard up. This ain't over yet!"

"Yes, ma'am!"

The pound of a Reaper's foot shook the ground around them. Jack lost her footing. The barrier lost its effectiveness long enough for a salarian not in cover to take a lethal hit.

"Shit!"

Prangley was by her side in seconds, reconstructing the barrier in her stead. Cocky, this one, but he was also one of her most powerful biotic students and shaping up to be a great leader someday.

"Are you alright, ma'am?" Prangley asked.

Jack shrugged off Rodriguez's efforts to help her up, crying, "Son of a bitch! You see what I'm talking about, Rodriguez. When shit hits the fan, you have to be ready to deal with it, whatever the cost."

Rodriguez sent Prangley a knowing smile. "It's okay, ma'am. Even the most badass of biotics can make mistakes."

"Mistakes, my ass," Jack grumbled.

One of the salarian STG agents approached once the major fire fight had subsided. A few, still in cover, were shooting at unseen enemies not in Jack's view, but the worst of the attack had ended. It wasn't over. Not by a long shot. Reaper attacks came in waves. At least for a little while, they had a chance to catch a breather, get a drink of water before they moved on and the battled continued.

Jack dropped the barrier and eyed the approaching salarian. She had no love of them. Scrawny little guys who couldn't handle a full on assault, but they were mean infiltrators. They knew how to sneak up behind their enemies and slit their throats before they knew the blade was coming. The salarian approaching her was no exception. He was one of the boldest strategists she had ever worked with…except for Shepard, of course.

"Major Kirrahe," she said, straightening her shoulders. "Shit, I'm sorry. The ground beneath me gave way. I lost my footing."

The major raised his three-fingered hand and gave her a dismissive wave. "Don't trouble yourself, Jack. These things happen in battle." He nodded toward the fallen salarian. "Dunok was a fine warrior, but he always had a tendency of breaking cover too early. Thought himself invincible, and he paid for it today with his life. Now, he will not be coming with us to complete the mission."

"Have you heard any news?"

"Last communiqué says they were bunkered down, but taking heavy fire. Their support is weakening."

"We need to get to them."

"Yes and the enemy is throwing everything they have at us, but…rest assured, we will make it with the help of you and your students."

Another salarian ran to Kirrahe's side. "Commander Rentola," Kirrahe announced. "What news?"

Jack had trouble telling the two men apart. Salarians all looked the same to her. They sounded the same. They had soft, curved horns atop their flat heads. Each species had unique differences, of course. She knew that, but the only way she knew to tell these two apart were the raised pebble-like bumps on Kirrahe's amphibious skin. Rentola was smooth-skinned with a gradient coloring of dark brown to tan from the tip of his horns down to his chin. She would never have said it to their face, at least not on the battleground, but in her mind their names were Pebbles and Baby Face.

"The way is clear, Major," Rentola, Kirrahe's second-in-command said.

"Right." Kirrahe nodded once. "Let's move. We've no time to waste."

"Major, what of Dunok?"

Kirrahe spared the fallen soldier one last glance and sigh heavily. "Leave the dead. We make haste to those who are still living. Move out!"

He signaled those remaining, and when the troops followed his lead, Jack and her team fell in line. This was no march. They weren't here to fight. This was a rescue mission. With an emphasis on stealth, they crept through the rubble of South London, past decimated buildings, through what had once been neighborhoods, and parks where children used to play. (Rodriguez stopped long enough to stare at a smoldering teeter-totter before Jack shoved her back into line; though, she couldn't stop her eyes from resting upon it longer than was necessary herself.) They couldn't linger. Somewhere out there, a team had a plan and it was their job to make sure they didn't die in the process.

Problem was, every known tool of the Reapers had the team bogged down, surrounded. The Reaper's indoctrination techniques, though insidious, were damned effective. The sons-a-bitches had somehow learned of the team's plan and were halting their progress, hoping to take them out before the plan could come to fruition. A miniscule rescue team of twelve (well, eleven now), comprised of salarians and human biotics, would be the last thing the bastards would ever expect.

Jack had never been to London. She had heard stories, looked at vids, saw images on personal terminals, but to have seen the city with her own eyes—no. Growing up, she saw only pain and death, mixed with a little bit of the whole galaxy. She'd been all over. She'd even been to Earth once or twice, but London hadn't been on her sight-seeing list. (Besides, one wouldn't have called what she came to Earth to do a vacation. It was business; the business of revenge. Let's leave it at that.) She had no idea what the city looked like before, not really, but the devastation still hit her like a brick to the head. There was nothing left but rubble and corpses. Sure, there were pockets where people tried to survive, but most had fled to less populated areas and left their cities empty for the war to be fought. The initial assault must have been a bloodbath, though.

Her lack of knowledge of London is what kept her in the dark. Jack didn't know how Pebbles managed to find his way through this hell. Those STG types knew their shit, she guessed. Thus, she didn't ask questions. She followed. Unlike her younger sidekicks, insistent upon knowing exactly what the hell they were doing.

"Where the hell are we?" Rodriguez asked ahead of her, skirting quietly around the corner of what used to be an apartment building.

"I'm not sure yet," Prangley answered.

"Well, where are we going?"

"To the rendezvous point."

"Yeah, and where's that?"

Jack prodded with a heavy hand on Prangley's back. "Shut it! Keep moving."

She had the same questions, but a good soldier always knew when to follow orders and when to ask questions. Now was the not the time for questions. Still, when Pebbles led them out of cover, momentarily crossing a street filled with crumbled portions of the apartment buildings next to it, she was taken aback at the sight before her.

Trees!

Trees as green as the day they were planted. Their leaves were coated in a fine layer of ash, but they were green and they were untouched. All save for the iron fencing marking their boundary. In places, the fencing stood, in others it was demolished or gone completely. Pebbles led them through a gap and into the trees. The heady scent of greenery filled her nostrils above the stench of death and burning. Here, life continued to flourish. The question was, for how long?

Their way, marked by concrete paths, cut a trail through the trees and Pebbles led the way through them. He stopped at intervals, holding up his three fingers and then, he would continue. They moved steadily along the marked paths, eleven of them now, eight salarians and three humans, quietly snaking their way through an idyllic paradise while hell waited for them on the other side.

A few minutes in, they came to open water and Kirrahe waved her ahead. Jack, with Prangley and Rodriguez behind her, made her way to Kirrahe's side. Now was the time for questions.

"Where the hell are we?" she asked, paying little attention to the look Rodriguez gave Prangley.

Kirrahe consulted his omni-tool. "A park, better known as Battersea."

"Battersea?" Prangley said. "Then that means we're near the Thames."

"Yes, the river is close."

"You know this place, Prangley?" Jack asked.

He nodded. "I've never been here, but I've studied London." Prangley looked to the salarian major with a hint of worry. "Are we crossing the river?"

"Yes," Kirrahe said after a second or two of studying his charges, looking for any sign of doubt in his command.

Jack frowned. "We'll be sitting ducks, _if_ there's even a bridge to cross. Where the hell are we going?" She waited for Prangley to echo his earlier comment to Rodriguez, but he thankfully kept silent.

"I understand your concern, Jack, but we must cross the river. It's the only way we'll get to the rendezvous point."

"And what's that?"

Kirrahe consulted his omni-tool once again. "A human house of worship—Westminster Cathedral." He took his time wrapping his salarian tongue around the foreign words.

"Westminster?" Prangley stated in awe. "You mean it's still standing?"

"That I cannot tell you."

Jack ignored Prangley's interest. "How much farther?"

"A little over three kilometers."

"Shit," Jack said under her breath. "That'll take almost an hour on foot; _two_ , if we run into a fight."

"I know the odds," Pebbles said. He went quiet for several seconds before he spoke again. "One wonders why the Reapers have not touched this place. It is pristine by human standards."

Jack looked at him, saw the images passing before his large, black eyes. They were reflected in them. She knew what he was thinking. Sur'Kesh. Greenery covered its surfaces the way concrete and skyscrapers covered Earth's. He was thinking of home, of seeing the same sort of ruins on his planet. Sur'Kesh had not yet been invaded, but it was in the Reapers' sights. The longer this war waged on, the more likely the invasion of Sur'Kesh would begin.

She felt for Pebbles. She really did, but she also knew Kirrahe wasn't one for sugar-coating. "They haven't touched it because there are no people here, so let's get moving before they find us and raze Battersea Park to the ground."

Kirrahe nodded. "Here's the plan."

EEE

 ** _T_** he plan had been simple enough, but Jack hated it. It involved something she didn't particularly agree with—separation. Prangley called the body of water before them a boating lake. Even now as they rounded the lake, Jack could make out colorful boats bobbing in the water. It was surreal standing within this untouched park. Above the green trees, there was smoke and a hint of orange flame. Hell was around the corner and, sadly enough, their destination.

When they separated, Jack and her kids had cut left, while the salarians had moved forward to cut through water. Pebbles' idea was to cut across the park instead of taking the long way around, and salarians moved faster through water. Knowing the inept little humans wouldn't be able to keep up with them, he ordered them to make their way undetected through the park and rendezvous at the Chelsea Bridge. Jack hadn't liked the idea. How was she expected to protect them if they didn't stay together? But then, she wasn't in charge.

"Every minute we shave off to reach our destination, is one more minute we give the team to accomplish their mission," Kirrahe had said.

Jack still didn't like it, but onward they went in the cover of shade trees. They rounded the lake that should have been filled with happy afternoon boaters, upon a concrete pathway that should have seen recreational joggers getting in their exercise or people walking their dogs so they can take a shit in green grass. This unearthly darkness wasn't right. This silence of death wasn't either. The sensation was close to being within the protective bubble of a barrier. Nothing can touch you. You're safe. You're protected. You're within a bubble of peace and respite, but you can still hear the scream of death on the outside. Jack didn't know which was worse—being out there, or being in here.

They were past the pump house now, closing in on the boat launch. The sounds of death, destruction and the pounding feet of Reapers was getting closer.

"Stop!" Prangley called from behind.

Jack turned to see him looking at his omni-tool. He pointed forward, off the path. "Let's go this way. We can cut across the open-air arena."

Rodriguez shook her head. "We should stick to the path."

"Cutting across the arena will get us there quicker."

"Are you crazy?" Rodriguez said. "We'll be exposed to God knows what!"

"There's no time. We've gotta meet up with the STG group ASAP. Those scrawny little pond jumpers move faster than us and you know it."

Jack punched his arm. "Hey. Those scrawny little pond jumpers outrank you, and they could take you out in a second."

Prangley rolled his eyes and nodded; his own manner of apology. "Don't worry, Rodriguez. There's nothing out here anyway."

"Face it, Rodriguez," Jack said. "Sometimes Prangley's right. Besides, we're more likely to be spotted standing here arguing than we will if we're on the move, so let's go. Lead the way, Prangley."

"Yes, ma'am."

Prangley shot ahead, leading them through the trees and over grass that never smelled as sweet to Jack as it did right then. Maybe it was the thought that she wasn't getting off this planet alive, or maybe the nostalgic sensation of grass crunching underfoot and knowing this might be the last time she ever experienced it. She didn't want that to end. But, soon enough, Prangley led them over interconnecting pathways, then back into the cover of trees until they reached a building with a triple-arched roof.

 _Millennium Arena—Battersea Park_ were the words spelled out in silver metallic lettering over the entrance. With its intentionally weathered wooden face and steel designed accoutrements, the building looked more like a factory than the entrance to an arena. Were she here to watch a sporting match, Jack might have shown more interest in its design, but she simply wanted to stay alive long enough to get the job done. Architecture and design were the last things on her mind.

 _Think about it when this is over. Think about it when the Alliance gives you a big fat paycheck._

If the war _ever_ got to the point where it was 'over,' anyway. Jack tried not to think of that either.

"This way," Prangley whispered.

He felt it too; the sense that they were about to leave it all behind. It was serenely peaceful and yet immensely terrifying at the same time.

A fence blocked entrance to the arena, but Prangley made his way around that. To the building's right, the fence had a closed gate. His omni-tool provided easy access. They were through in seconds, making their way under the cover of trees surrounding the building's property; cover that wouldn't last long.

"No, no, no," Rodriguez whispered as they rounded the back of the building.

Ahead lay a running track and rugby field at its center, but it wasn't the fence blocking entrance that had Rodriguez antsy; it was the wide open area and the anticipated run they were about to face.

"There's got to be another way," she added, fear shining like a light in her eyes.

Jack seized the girl's shoulder and squeezed. "Suck it up, Rodriguez. This is war, and you're a damn soldier."

"Yes, ma'am," Rodriguez said, but her shaky voice proved she wasn't convinced.

Jack eyed them both. "Listen to me. Put the fear behind you. Forget about it. It's ugly. It's dirty. And it doesn't give a shit about you. Kick fear in the ass and run like you've never run before. If you could stand up to Cerberus, you can stand up to your own fear. You got me?"

Prangley saluted. Rodriguez nodded, took a deep breath and swallowed the fear as best she could. The girl did no more than throw a sheet over it, but it would have to suffice. For now, they had to get moving. As much as they jabbered along the way, they could have taken the long way around.

Jack vaulted over the fence blocking access to the track. They were still in the shade of an overhanging tree, but they wouldn't be for long. As soon as Prangley and Rodriguez were over, she gave the two a dose of her strength with one good, long look.

"Let's run!"

Giving the two a head start, Jack flanked them, running as fast as she could. Fear gave Rodriguez impetus. She streaked across the track, her heels kicking up the kind of dirt only a track runner could truly appreciate. They crossed the track and its rugby field midways, and were it not for the fenced in tennis court ahead, they would have made a straight bee-line for the trees. Instead, they had to go around it, skirting the high fencing designed to keep tennis balls off the track field. They were passing the court on their right, no more than thirty meters to the cover and relative safety of trees, when a low, keening sound issued above their heads.

Jack looked up and her eyes bugged. Harvester! The winged abomination must have spotted their movement. It was free diving right in their direction.

"Shit! Run!"

She didn't give either of them a chance to look up, least of all Rodriguez. Urging them forward with harsh commands she normally reserved for her more insolent students, they made it into the shadow of trees in hardly enough time. A shot streaked by her, close enough to singe hair. Jack rolled right, shot to her knees and with a battle-ready scream, she shot a shockwave with all her force toward the landing Harvester.

It had hardly set two monstrous feet on the ground, when it stumbled, lost its balance in the strength of the shockwave and fell over.

"Jack!"

"Run," she screamed back. She knew she couldn't take the beast down on her own, and those two, strong as they were with their own biotics, didn't have what it took to take down a Harvester. Their best bet was cover, and trees, unfortunately, wouldn't offer the kind of cover they needed. Out here, she didn't know what would. She gained her feet and followed her students into the thicket of trees and thick bramble. How long did they have? How long before it ignited everything around them and burned them to a crisp?

Jack gritted her teeth, pissed to be trapped this way. The Harvester keened, but she didn't look back. They shot through the trees and through to another open pathway. They were momentarily back out in the open, cutting a path toward an upward sloping hill dotted with trees.

"Hide! Get behind trees. Don't let it see movement!"

They were diving, heading for cover when a breeze arced over them. Sweating as they were, it felt good. The breeze was cool, but ominous. Above them, through the breaks in the branches and leaves, was the Harvester. It wasn't fooled. It has spotted them even through the limited cover.

Jack wasn't going down without a fight. "To me," she yelled to Prangley and Rodriguez, and raised her weapon. A few rounds pierced the Harvester's semi-organic hull, shattered a glowing blue eye and sent it banking out of the way. Time enough for her two students to steady themselves at her side. "Barrier!"

The Harvester reared its ugly head back into view. Jack gave it a few more rounds. She knew what the sight of a Harvester meant. Reaper ground troops. It dropped them like deadly gifts. They wouldn't last long out here the three of them alone.

Prangley and Rodriguez raised the barrier above them, blocking the second shot from the Harvester's ugly maw. The ground troops would be here any second. They couldn't stay here, but the barrier hindered movement. It was a stationary job, keeping troops in cover while they defended their position. You could move, but it was more taxing on the biotic providing the cover, and it didn't keep enemies out, it only prevented their fire power from getting in. They were stuck. Looked like the war would come to an end sooner for them than it would for anyone else.

Jack screamed in rage. She wasn't going out like this, trapped like a kid in a cage. She shot above her head like a mad woman at the approaching Harvester. It dipped low, ready to drop its gift, and Jack took out another eye. It voiced it own rage, but Jack didn't stop. Bullet after bullet flew from her weapon. She watched pieces of its armor flick away, the tip of a wing pop off like a zit, another eye go dark. A few seconds passed where Jack forgot where she was. The trees disappeared, replaced by metal rooms. The screams of the Harvester were the screams of her victims within Teltin. Escape by any means necessary. Get out! Live! It was all she knew until the screams of her victims, of the Harvester, turned into the scream of a fighter jet.

Overhead, what looked like two golden arrows hit the Harvest broadside. Jack didn't think she'd ever seen anything more beautiful.

"Yeah! _Eat that_ , Harvester bitch!"

With Prangley and Rodriguez cheering beside her, the Harvester careened somewhere out of sight. The only evidence of its impact with hard-packed earth was the shudder beneath their feet. Jack eyed the empty sky above just as two jets screamed overhead, pounding more fire power into the Harvester which had disappeared somewhere south. It's keening turned into the screams of the dying. A good sound to rally her troops.

They came kissing distance close to meeting their end. Hell, they might still buy it somewhere later today, but not right now and it was better than a good feeling. Prangley had one arm around her neck, and Rodriguez had both wrapped around her waist. Jack grimaced when she wanted to smile. She could get used to this.

"Come on, guys. Lay off. We've still gotta meet up with the pond jumpers."

Jack would have broke into a run then, but her comm crackled to life with static. It was probably Pebbles checking on their progress and making sure they made it out alive. They had to have seen the Harvester. Jack raised a hand to her ear to clear the signal. Her heart was still racing and her hands were shaking with a crazy adrenaline, but she was here. She and her kids were still alive.

"Jack," came a voice, cracked and hazy through the comm, but it clearly wasn't salarian.

She wished for a chance to get her voice under control. She was winded and she shook from head to toe, but there was nothing for it. She had to answer. "Yeah, who's this?"

"You know who this is. Get your ass out of there! You have ground troops inbound. We'll try to take out what we can."

There was no mistaking the voice. Jack both loved and hated her at the same time. "Son of a bitch, is that you, Cheerleader?"

Jack could have sworn she heard a chuckle.

"One and the same. Get moving so we can light this place up."

"You got it! Let's move boys and girls!"

If either of her kids doubted what "light this place up" meant, it didn't show in how they followed orders. They gave their final run their all. Up the slightly sloping hill ahead and down its other side, neither of them stopped. Not even when the sound of gunfire sounded from above and behind them, and the scream of husks overwhelmed the silence of the park. Knowing how close those things had been made Jack's stomach turn. But she kept moving, across another pathway and into another patch of trees. They were thin this time. She could see a fence on the other side and a bank of ruins beyond it. They were almost out of Battersea Park.

Jack banked left when she reached the fence. She would have vaulted but for the spikes. Didn't matter anyway. The exit was close. Ahead was an open roadway still littered with fall leaves. A semblance of what was. Eyes glued to the normalcy of gold and orange leaves, Jack nearly ran face first into a locked gate.

"Shit!" Cursing and kicking, Jack shook the gate. She couldn't believe her eyes. There were two gates, one on either side of the road. Both were closed, and if that didn't beat all, two gates blocked vehicle entrance to the road. With all that had happened within the last several minutes, she was dumbfounded to find herself trapped again. "What is it with this city and gates!"

She raised her gun, ready to depress the trigger when—

"Jack!"

Behind them, running over the hill and between the trees, were a host of husks. Somehow, these disgusting things had made it out of the fire fight. The very touch of their feet upon the ground was a desecration. Their filth marred the pristine beauty of Battersea Park.

Disgusted, Jack took careful aim. "Prangley, get that gate open."

She heard fear in his voice, but he obliged. "Yes, ma'am."

They were almost upon them. "Rodriguez, you know what to do."

As the girl's biotic powers revved up, Jack took the first shot, and then the next and the next. One by one, the human abominations fell. Rodriguez used her biotic powers to pull them from the ground two at a time. She slammed them against trees, impaled them upon the fence or threw them clear across the street. If only they could make it over the fence so easily, but they used the time it took for Prangley to get the gate open with his omni-tool to lay waste to the approaching offensive. The buzzing sound of the omni-tool cutting through steel hinges (a throwback to the old days Battersea Park was) was as loud as the scream of husks.

Jack took three more down. Rodriguez crushed two more. Their lines were thinning, but continued to come over the hillside. That's when Jack saw something different waddling over the hill with a clear line of sight. Rachni!

"Prangley?"

"Almost there!"

"We need to go now!"

"I'm trying!"

Jack put her all into the fire fight, but she was running out of ammo and they were sitting ducks for the rachni. Using her biotic powers, she picked up a handful of husks and threw them at the bulbous monstrosity. Rodriguez followed suit. Yet it didn't stop the rachni's forward movement. Husks were all but spent. The rachni, coined Ravagers by the Alliance, kept coming. Jack guessed it could be worse. A brute, a hideous combination of turian and krogan, could top the hill. They were as ugly as the Reaper's bastardized version of the rachni, but they were big and they were brutal. Still, it didn't diminish the dread that came over her when the rachni positioned its bright red laser between her eyes. Two twin turreted guns, implanted on either side of the rachni's head, took aim. Jack didn't budge. She gritted her teeth and emptied her weapon into the rachni. If this was the end, so be it!

The clang of wrought iron making contact with concrete, the command of a salarian voice, the pop of scorpion pistols firing explosive projectiles—all of it happened in the seconds before the rachni could let go one round. Its laser beam vanished and it stopped its forward movement to examine the numerous projectiles that had adhered to its body. Each one beeped successively, increasing in intensity until…

BOOM!

The rachni exploded into a million green oozy pieces. Its "children," the Reapers synthetic version of rachni babies, exploded from the creature's bulbous egg sacks, spilling them like cockroaches onto the grass. The little skittering critters, and what was left of the husks, the salarians made short work of.

Jack didn't think she would ever be happy to see a salarian in her life. Still…

She broke from Prangley and Rodriguez, pounced through the now open gate (thanks to Prangley) and onto the salarian major. "Where the hell have you been? Don't tell me you didn't see the Harvester that almost pulverized us into meat!"

Major Kirrahe, on the opposite side of the fence with the rest of his troop, appeared immune to Jack's verbal attacks. "We saw it. There is little time to explain. The fighter jet pilot who informed us of your situation has also warned us of a large contingent approaching from the south. We must make haste across the bridge."

Jack knew not to butt heads with command. Shepard had taught her better than that, and it was a bad example for her kids, but damn it all to hell, they had almost been killed twice since they separated from the salarian unit inside the park. She needed to let out a little aggression.

"Bullshit!" Jack stepped closer to Pebbles until she was nose to…well, face to face with the salarian. "We need cover before I'll cross that bridge. I'm not taking my kids across it without a plan."

A tightening of the brow was the closest thing to ire Jack had ever seen on Pebbles. "In my entire career, I've not made a move without a well thought out plan. You claim to have worked with Commander Shepard. If your claims are as true as you say, then I'm sure she's informed you of my capability."

"Yeah, my claims are true, and she's told me all about you. You're the ballsiest tactician in STG behind Mordin Solus, but I don't take well to almost getting my ass shot off." Jack lowered her voice to a menacing whisper. "And I almost lost my kids. Anything happens to them and you lose your protection. You got that?"

"Understood, Jack," Kirrahe said, but his appearance belied his words. Jack's words had put no fear in him. "We are equal, then. I, too, would not _'take well'_ to losing anyone under my command, but advance we must. Are you with us or not?"

With Prangley and Rodriguez at her side, Jack had no choice but to follow command. "If you've got a plan, I'm with you."

"An acceptable plan," Kirrahe said with a nod.

Jack frowned. She still didn't like it, but she would have followed no matter the odds. Going forward was better than staying behind. "Lead the way."

The salarians moved out at the major's behest, and Jack and her students followed. They jogged a ways from the Battersea Park gate. Jack gave it one last glance over her shoulder. The time for greenery and the serenity of nature was over. Back to war.

The park now behind them, the troop jogged out into the open. Across the street were the ruins of what had once been an apartment building. Jack remained eager to nestle in its crumbled pockets of protection than to run wide open on a bridge with no cover, but she forced herself to trust in the salarian major. He knew what he was doing. Would he have made it off Virmire all those years ago with Shepard if he didn't?

"What was that about?" Prangley asked as they cross the bridge's threshold. They were now over the Thames.

Jack gave him a quick sideways glance. "Me protecting what's mine." She didn't see the smile Prangley and Rodriguez shared behind her back, but she knew it was there.

"Aye-aye, ma'am," Prangley answered.

The Chelsea Bridge, like Battersea Park, was a holdover from days gone by. This part of the city was still the old London, and Chelsea Bridge was still the same self-anchored suspension bridge that had been built in the late 1930's, with many major overhauls and newfangled additions over the last two hundred and fifty years. Four towers held up the suspension cables, and at either end of the bridge two lamp posts lit the way, each ornamented with gilded galleons. Their light was hazy, wavering. On a good night, the entire bridge would be glowing, from beneath as well as along the cables to the very tops of its towers, but there wasn't much light left in London. What was left was lit by flame and the eerie light of Reapers in the distance. Jack could make out two for sure.

They were nearly halfway across when a screech tore through the night. It stopped them in their tracks. When Jack turned, her jaw came unhinged.

She yelled over her shoulder to the major. "'Large contingent' my ass! That's an entire goddamn regiment!"

Behind them, on the other side of the bridge and just coming into view near the park, a mass of Reapers forces. In among them were not only brutes and rachni ravagers, but banshees, disfigured Reaper versions of asari with one hell of a set of pipes. Their screeches were ear-shattering. Jack hoped Kirrahe's "acceptable plan" contained a miracle, otherwise they were not getting out of this one like they had the last two.

A shot landed at her feet, leaving a black scorch mark, and a salarian cried out in pain behind her.

"Move!" Kirrahe commanded.

What other choice did they have but to run and hope a stray or intentional bullet didn't bury itself in their backs? Jack shoved her students forward and ran. There was no option but to turn and put up a barrier to protect their retreat. She fired behind her as she ran, hoping to suppress the fire of advancing cannibals. Brutes were tearing their way across the bridge. Her troop was only half way across. They were never going to make it in time.

"Now would be a good damn time to employ that 'acceptable plan' of yours, Major!"

It wasn't until she said it that Rodriguez pointed out the row of explosives laid out across the center of the bridge. Jack smiled. They were going to be cutting it close, but it sure as hell would be pretty.

She jumped over the row of explosives, turning to mow down several cannibals (batarian Reaper constructs with just enough brains to hold a weapon). The screech of banshees was chilling enough to stop the heart of a hardened warrior, but the screech of fighter jets overhead could drown them out. Jack imagined Miranda, with her genetically-modified body of perfection and her tight fitting clothing, in the cockpit with her fingers on the controls, obliterating every beast in pursuit. Her hatred for the cheerleader obliterated with them. She understood what the 'acceptable plan' was now. Jack planted her feet to the pavement and ran like she never had before.

Major Kirrahe and his band of soldiers cleared the bridge's threshold on the other side. Prangley and Rodriguez made it steps ahead of her. Jack gave into temptation and looked back. She wanted to see the bridge go when Miranda locked onto the explosives. The last thing she expected to see was a brute several feet in front of her.

It launched in the air. Jack closed her eyes and ejected a stream of biotic power ahead of her, but that only lessened its forward movement. She wasn't armored. She was going to feel it.

The brute rammed into her with bone crushing force.

The screech of a fighter jet. The zap of laser fire, and Jack felt rather than heard the explosion. Like watching a vid on slo-mo, the world stopped. Heat singed her and the bridge shook beneath her. She felt a stinging graze to her cheek and felt sure there would be blood, then the ground gave way, the pavement vanished beneath her feet. She was falling.

What's that saying? Three times the charm. As soon as the falling sensation ended, Jack knew she had been saved, and by her student no less. Who else had the power to save her from a free fall in the middle of the air? But her body still ached from the brute's impact; her third life used up. How many more did she have left?

Jack didn't open her eyes until her body touched solid ground. A flurry of movement told her Prangley and Rodriguez were at her side in seconds. The healing sound of an omni-tool dispensing medigel flowed through her.

"Jack, are you okay?" Rodriguez cried.

Jack sat up. "Ugh, never better. Am I alive?"

Prangley examined her through his omni-tool. He nodded. "You're good."

"A few scrapes and bruises," said Kirrahe, kneeling beside her. "But I believe you're going to make it. Our enemy, on the other hand…" He lifted his slight chin to indicate direction.

Jack turned and stared at the destruction of the Chelsea Bridge. It was gone, destroyed in a barrage of flame along with every Reaper creeper than had crawled over it. There were plenty more on the other side gunning for a fight though. They fired their weapons, cannibals and ravagers alike, and banshees exploded biotic powers, but none of their fire power made it across the Thames. For now, the STG group of salarians and humans were safe.

Rodriguez helped Jack to her feet. "We did it, Jack."

"You're damn right we did." She shot the Reaper horde a middle finger wishing it were a nuke instead. "But this ain't over yet."

"Far from over," Kirrahe said. "We've still have many kilometers left to go before we reach our destination."

Jack held her midsection and grimaced. She ached all over. "Let's get this over with. I'm itching for another fight anyway."

Rodriguez laughed…or, she would have. She would have told Jack what she needed was a break, or maybe even a good vacation. But she never had a chance to utter the words. No, a bullet didn't tear through her chest or plant itself between her eyes, but one might have thought so with how quickly she quieted. She wasn't the only one. Even the horde on the other side of the river went silent.

To the north, the sky ripped open and a beam of white light shot from the clouds hundreds of kilometers above, stabbing into the ground like an omni-tool blade.

"By the maker," one salarian uttered.

"My God," Prangley whispered beside her.

Kirrahe and the majority of his troopers remained silent. Jack was the one who couldn't hold her tongue. After the long battle out of Battersea Park and her subsequent saves—once by Miranda, once by the STG troops and finally by her own students—this felt like the last blow, the final nail in the coffin.

"What _the fuck_ is that?"

The only one brave enough to venture an answer to _that_ question was Pebbles.

"We haven't the luxury of time to find out, Jack. We need to get off this road. We've drawn too much attention to our location already. Commander Rentola, move the troops out!"

"Yes, sir!"

Kirrahe crossed the once busy road with his troops in tow and disappeared into the rubble of North London. Jack moved to follow, urging her kids forward, but not without staring warily at the beam of light that had sliced its way downward from the heavens above. Right now, with the distance they had left to travel, and the possible entanglements they could find themselves in along the way, she didn't want to know what it meant.

* * *

 **I made great use of Google Maps to write Jack's traverse through the ruined streets of London in this and in further chapters. Bioware never really gave us a great look at their version of future London, so I had to use my imagination coupled with reality. To any Londoners, your input in this portion of the story would be helpful. Let me know if I've gotten anything wrong.**

 **Well, what do you think so far? I would love to hear from you.**


	5. ONE Last Gift

**MASS EFFECT: ONE**

* * *

 **ONE Last Gift**

 _ **T** he arms of The Citadel stretch out, broken and bent, but reaching outward to the galaxy as if to hug a long lost child, to welcome her and her children back into the family. But the time for a gathering of intergalactic races is over. There is no longer anyone to embrace them together as family. Their mother has died._

 _The world below is dark, burning with fires only she can see. Death surrounds her. Like dead fish on the surface of water, fragmented Reaper hulls drift. Smaller warships left broken in the wake of their destruction are the poison food they ate. Out here, life does not exist._

 _Could there be on the world below? Are there cheers? Are there screams? Or is there only silence? Whatever the answer, she can hear nothing. There is no sound in a vacuum._

 _But there is sight._

 _Before her lay the ruins of the Citadel, impressively dark and ominous. Within its dead arms, she is insignificant. She floats like the rubble around her on feet that do not move. Here and there, buildings she once knew stand tall and proud as they once had upon the arms of their mother. Their lights have gone out, but they continue to mark the way amidst smoking wreckage and the ruin of bodies. Signs flicker ahead with light and with memory. Letters stutter upon them like the beat of a heart._

 _Carried by an invisible force, she moves past them, between them, over them, and finds herself moving through pathways both alien and familiar. Green plants smolder. Flamingo lilies lay like heart-shaped splatters of blood. They share space with the real thing. The lap of gently flowing water does not reach her ears. No artificial clouds float overhead in an artificial blue sky. All is dark and quiet on the Presidium._

 _Something draws her, pulls her as though by a string, away from the dark and the stench of wasted life poured like water upon the ground. Soft as a ghostly whisper and yet with the weight of a cry, it pulls her upward along the Tower. Past shattered windows she flies, where inside darkness encompasses, shot seemingly into space toward that which is alien, parasitic, grotesquely bloated. It has brought both death and life to the Citadel. She feels it in her bones. But it is here that the force has drawn her. Through the beams of a damaged structure and a crumble of concrete the size of boulders, Liara can discern two symbols._

 _N 7._

EEE

 **The Normandy – After Endgame**

 _ **H**_ er eyes opened, not to darkness, but to bright overhead lights and the concerned faces of her friends. The subtle thrum of the Normandy's engines had replaced quiet desolation, but not the steady thrumming of her heart. What happened? Where had those vivid images come from? What could it have meant? Was it a dream, a hallucination, or…?

"Are you okay?"

The question came from Joker. He sat beside her, her hand within his, worry for her masking his pain for the passing of EDI. Unmerited. She did not deserve his concern. Beside him stood Garrus, and across from them Tali, as well as the acting captain of the Normandy, Ashley Williams.

"Yes, I—" she began.

 _I_ what? _I am fine?_ If she said it, it would be a lie. Physically, she was fine, but mentally… Something did not feel right. Why did she keep envisioning the Citadel every time she closed her eyes?

Sitting up, Liara looked passed the concerned face—at the working instruments, at the flicker of light on the doctor's monitor—and put aside what she had been going to say. "What happened?"

"Ship is back up and running," Garrus said. "Finally."

Jeff squeezed her hand. "You passed out, dropped like a stone."

"When we heard, we came running," came the slightly filtered voice of Tali at the foot of the bed. She touched a gloved hand to Liara's booted foot. "How are you feeling?"

What answer could she give? There was no answer. She had never experienced anything like it before, an out-of-body sensation that was also uniquely and nauseatingly in-body. She could remember every smell, hear the crackle of flames, the _zzzzttt_ of neon signs flickering on and off. Someone or something had prematurely pulled her back. It could have been Jeff taking her hand, or Garrus talking. Whatever it was, it felt wrong, as this world was wrong and the dream world the one in which she belonged, as if she still had something there to do. It was hard to put into words.

"Good," she answered, making herself meet Tali's eyes. "…I guess."

A hand landed on her shoulder. "Do you have any memory of what happened to you?" Dr. Chakwas asked.

How does one describe the indescribable? It was too early to speak of. She was not sure if what she had experienced was real. She needed answers of the sort no one here could provide.

"I was talking to Jeff," she began hesitantly. "And now I am here. I cannot tell you what happened in between." She was not lying. She could not tell them, at least not now.

"How do you feel now?"

Liara instinctively knew this was not the same as Tali's question. Dr. Chakwas would expect a more direct answer.

"A bit lightheaded, but otherwise ready for work."

Liara turned her attention to the acting commander, Ashley Williams, who did not strive to hide her doubt. The evidence was in her heavy lidded frown. Liara chose to ignore it. There were far more important things to consider. One of which remained in her mental vision like a digital photograph; the last vestiges of the dream that clung to her like a brand—two symbols.

"If the Normandy is operational, have we made contact with the fleet?" Desperation colored her voice, making her sound shrill, completely unlike herself. Struggle though she may, she could not shake it. She _was_ desperate for answers, and yet afraid to know the truth.

The frown that had sat almost proudly on Ashley's brow slipped. Her look now mirrored a sad truth. Liara braced herself.

"What is it?" she asked.

With a sigh, Ashley said, "We're not operational."

"We're lucky to have power," Jeff added. "But we're not getting off the ground any time soon."

Liara took the blow in stride. It was a setback, but it was not the answer she sought. "And communication?"

Jeff's expression held little promise. "We're basically dead in the water."

Ashley nodded, the weight of their situation as heavy as the armor upon her shoulders. "Joker's right. We started sending out communiqués when I got the call about your condition. We're getting nothing back but static. We don't even know where we are."

"Worse yet," said Tali, her head bowed, "we do not know the outcome of Shepard's actions."

Jeff shook his head. "No. We know one of them." He didn't look behind him, but he wanted to.

Looking at them each in turn, Liara saw the same despondency. Heads hung low. Shoulders slumped. They had given up hope. Every single one of them had a home and a family ravaged by war, and none of them knew what they had left to go back home to. If there was anything at all. Tali's final statement was like the sealing of a casket or the pack of fresh dirt on a newly covered corpse. Liara would not, she _could not_ give up hope that Shepard might still be alive. The light of life in her eyes had always been a ray of hope for her, even when she had lost her the first time. Her hope then had been as thin as a fresh sheen of ice, but it was there. She would not give up on her now, not when there was still a chance.

Getting to her feet, Liara stood away from the bed and faced them all. "Then what are we doing standing around here? Let's get this ship off the ground."

"That won't be so easy," Ashley said. "We don't even know how far out of the Sol System the shockwave pushed us."

"Then we figure it out. We cannot give up hope now, not when the chances are good that hope is right within our grasp."

"Hope?" Jeff asked, a frown on his stubbled face. "What hope is there for us, for EDI?"

Liara swallowed the pain she felt for him. Now was not the time for it. "Perhaps you are right, Jeff. Perhaps Shepard's actions will have repercussions, ones we may feel for a very long time to come, but she fought for us, she fought to keep us safe, to keep our families and the entire galaxy safe. We cannot repay her sacrifice with despair. _No_ …we fight. We fight for the people we love just as Shepard fought for us. Harness your hurt and your anger, use them to drive you to action. Let's get this ship off the ground. Let's go home."

"And if Shepard didn't make it?" Ashley asked, arms crossed. "If she failed?"

It was an outcome Liara did not wish to contemplate, but she swallowed the truth of it down like a bitter pill and faced her friends with determination. "If she failed, then we do exactly as she did. Shepard did not give up no matter the cost to herself, and neither can we. We fight. We give our all until we have nothing left to give. We fight until our dying breath."

Heads that hung were raised up. Shoulders squared and straightened, and arms crossed defiantly eased their forbidding grip. But it was the voice behind her that said her words had been heard.

"Booyah! That's what I'm talking about!"

Lieutenant Vega, the very man who had tempted her to test out her biotics on him, stood at the open door to the Medical Bay, one hand held up in a tightly clenched fist.

Vega was not the only one. Right behind him was Cortez, and outside the Medical Bay's two shattered windows were the other faces she had come to call family: Javik, Traynor, Adams, Donnelly and Daniels as well as a host of others. Even Allers was out of her hidey hole near engineering. She wished for the faces she could not see: Wrex, Pressley, EDI. But the ones she had were here and they were behind her one hundred percent. Only one other person need get on board, and she was currently fighting her negative tendencies.

Eventually, Ashley gave in despite her reservations. "Liara's right," she said. "We all have family. We all want to go home. So, let's kick it in the ass and get this ship running. Garrus, when we get this ship off the ground, we're going to need as much weapons power as we can get."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Tali, you and Adams get that engine purring."

"We're on it."

"Joker, I need you on the bridge where you belong. We need to reach Alliance Command and we need to do it ASAP. We need to know what the hell's going on out there."

"You can count on me." Jeff saluted, on his feet and ready for duty. His eyes sparkled, but not with the idea of going home. Liara could not read minds, as much as she wished her asari mental prowess were that good, but she didn't have guess where Jeff's thoughts lay—on EDI.

"Liara, with the power back, you'll serve us best in your other role as Shadow Broker. Let me know what you find."

"I will."

"And what about me?" came the voice of Traynor from the other side of the doctor's shattered bay windows.

Ashley donned a consoling grin. "On board communication is still down. I need those little legs of yours."

"Oh, bollocks!" Poor Traynor looked as if she were about to cry.

"Chop-chop everybody! Let's get to work!"

Liara smiled. The crew of the Normandy had always worked well as a united team under Shepard's leadership. Without her, they had become lost and unsure of themselves. What they had needed was a voice to urge them to action, to remind them that without her they would not even be here. She had been their warrior's cry in the hours before the final battle. The Normandy may not have her now, but she was here in spirit. Liara felt imbued with her courage and her resiliency despite insurmountable odds. Perhaps it was the dream, or their final connection seconds before Sovereign wiped Hammer out, but inside, Liara felt full with the lingering sensation of Shepard's presence. If, in the end, the outcome of Shepard's bravery was that she made the ultimate sacrifice, Liara could go on knowing Shepard would forever live in her heart.

As the crew passed her on their way to their prospective duties, Liara received a pat on the back or a thumbs up or a word of encouragement, but Jeff was the only one to stop before her and look her in the eyes. They shared a pain they alone could understand. They had both lost a part of themselves, but not with finality. Neither had anything tangible to lay to rest. Only one person had the ability to make them whole again. The only question was whether or not she made it off the Citadel in time. If anyone could bring EDI back to Jeff, it was Shepard.

As if he had heard her very thoughts, Joker wrapped Liara up in arms that were stronger than the rest of him, stronger even than his aching heart. "Thank you," he whispered into her ear.

"For what?"

"For giving me a good, swift kick in the ass."

"Jeff, I did not mean—"

He pulled away from her. "No, it's okay. I needed it. Reapers are gonna rue the day they ever messed with the crew of the Normandy… _and_ it's Commander."

"That is the spirit. Now let us see if either of us can reach someone out there."

"Aye-aye, Shadow Broker." Jeff gave one more salute, and one more look behind him, before getting back to work.

Liara, as well, cast her eyes in EDI's direction and tried to keep hope alive for her. She prayed for Joker what she prayed for herself before making her way back to her quarters. What would her monitors show? The information she needed, or just row after row of blank screens?

An arm snagged her on her way out the door. "And just where do you think you're going?"

"Dr. Chakwas? Is there something wrong? I feel just fine. I would like to get back to work."

She looked about the room. It was now empty. "Not before you tell me how long you've known."

"I am sorry, doctor, but I do not know to what you are referring."

Dr. Chakwas set her hands upon her slender hips and raised one doubtful eyebrow. "How long have you known you're pregnant?"

EEE

 ** _P_** _regnant?_

 _I cannot be. It is impossible! When? I am not ready for a child. I have responsibilities. I have—NO! This is not happening. Dr. Chakwas is wrong. She has made a mistake or something…_

Her conversation with the doctor was but half an hour ago, but for Liara the memory was still new enough to weaken her knees. Thank the goddess her bed had been close by or she would have found a place on the floor.

"How long have you known you're pregnant?" Dr. Chakwas had asked.

Liara stared dumbfounded at the bank of silent monitors in her quarters. For several minutes she forgot who she was. The Shadow Broker, a lethal information dealer with her own squad of elite mercenaries, and eyes in every corner of the galaxy. She had the ability to sway elections in her favor by simply releasing information a candidate thought he had hidden. She had entire corrupt organizations in the palm of her hand, and she could end them on a whim. All she had to do was tip off the proper authorities with a list of names and locations, all expertly documented and mapped, and they would be gone in a matter of days, if not hours. She had people like Aria T'Loak wrapped with a bow and a gift card. All she had to do was give the word. Liara was practically omniscient…and yet…

Her hands were shaking. The hands of the Shadow Broker would not shake so, but Liara T'Soni's did. She was not omniscient. She was mortal. She was asari, and children were for asari in their matron stage, not for one whose lifespan had only reached passed what other asari consider childhood. She had accomplished much in her one hundred plus years of life, but this was too much too fast. There had been no word on whether Shepard made it off the Citadel alive or…

And now this!

The monitors' static played across her face, washing her in a pale white light. Liara remembered her response to the doctor and it was not the response of one who played the role of Shadow Broker. She had spoken in the fragile voice of a frightened asari.

"Preg— _what?_ What are you talking about, Dr. Chakwas? I am not—"

"You most certainly are. Or do you think women in your state, and with your reputation, faint merely because their feeling emotional?"

"I—I—I do not know how to answer that."

Dr. Chakwas crossed her arms and grinned. "Why don't you have a seat, _Doctor_ T'Soni."

"There is no time. I have to—"

"Have a seat, Dr. T'Soni," Chakwas said, pointing to a chair at her desk, and this time the grin had gone.

Liara dropped her defiant shoulders and took the seat. She felt as lowly as an Alliance ensign around the doctor.

"Now, tell me, how have you been feeling lately?"

"I feel fine," she answered, as the doctor took the seat across from her and casually crossed her legs as if they were having a "how-do-you-do" conversation. "Other than the fact that the galaxy might be at its end and every sentient organic lifeform is in the process of being obliterated as we speak…" She lowered her head. "…and that we've received no word of Commander Shepard…I feel just fine."

Dr. Chakwas raised an eyebrow. "Well, I guess you're lucky you fainted right next to the medical bay."

"I did not faint. I felt light-headed for a moment—"

"You lost consciousness for a full five minutes. You fainted, Liara. Human women experience a similar reaction when in their first trimester."

Liara sighed heavily, bringing an end to Dr. Chakwas' rebuttal. She gave the doctor a level gaze. "Doctor, I am not pregnant. I appreciate your concern, but asari physiology is quite dissimilar from that of a human female. There are distinct differences. A trimester, as you call it, does not even exist in asari terminology. The period of gestation is—"

"Significantly longer, I know," the doctor said with a grin Liara could only refer to as placatory.

The smile succeeded only in igniting within her a blaze that she had difficulty dousing. Tight-lipped, she said, "With all due respect, Dr. Chakwas, I think I would know if I were pregnant. There are certain signs to look for."

"Yes, two of which are light-headedness and blackouts. Since the incident on Earth, you've been exhibiting them quite frequently. There are other signs of early fetal development in an asari. In no particular order, they are: heightened cerebral connection—to facilitate bonding with the child growing inside you, breasts and genitalia begin to deepen in color from conception onward, and most telling…" Chakwas sat forward, elbow propped on the armrest and her eyebrows raised. "The asari's mood changes. She becomes territorial, protective, of herself and of those she cares about. Typically manifests itself when someone challenges the asari's preconceived notions." Dr. Chakwas ended with another placating smile. "There are other signs, but I think I've made my point."

Liara had nothing to say. If her cheeks could have turned red as crimson, they would have. Instead, the markings around her eyes, what Shepard like to refer to as "freckles," darkened. She had to turn away from the doctor's confident grin. Chakwas was more right than she knew. Liara had been ignoring the signs the way a sick person ignores the signs of their illness until it is too late. There was too much happening, too much loss to have seen it on her own. Having it thrust in her face woke her up to reality and it forced a question, the only other link in the chain, to what was happening to her.

When she spoke, her voice was soft, without the hardness which she spoke only seconds before. "What about dreams?"

The doctor had sat back in her chair; if the question surprised her, Liara could not tell. "Excuse me?"

"Dreams. Are strange dreams a sign?"

It was Chakwas's turn to find herself at a loss for words. "I—I don't know…but I'll find out for you."

The conversation then turned to how she should be caring for herself and, in turn, the child growing within her. Liara could not remember much of it. She knew she would have to go back to the doctor at some point for clarification, but for now, she needed to sit, she needed to think. Even now, it did not feel real. It was like reliving the moment two years ago when they told her Shepard had died in the Normandy crash on Alchera. She had lived in denial for a time before she decided to take action (or before action was forced upon her), and she was living in denial now. There was only one way to end this confusion and know for sure. Liara stilled herself, afraid of the truth, and yet afraid the lack of confirmation might not give her pause in a dangerous situation.

A shaky sigh escaped her lips as her right hand slipped across her lower abdomen. Tears of fear and loss welled in her eyes. She closed them, let the tears slide down her cheeks, and she reached. Not with hands, but with her mind. She reached deep within, tendrils of thought snaking through many tunnels and bundles of nerves, searching out their endings and their beginnings until it reached its destination.

Gasping. Eyes opening, but not seeing. She saw only with her mind and made a connection of the most profound.

A movement inside her, slight and felt only with thoughts, not with the physical body. It was the movement of life, infinitesimal, barely a beating heart, but spiritually powerful and touched with the essence of the one she loved.

" _Shepard."_

EEE

 ** _J_** oker's fingers played over the display, punching in codes, searching signals, listening for the slightest call, the faintest echo of communication. The second they crash landed on this gorgeous, yet forsaken planet, they had heard nothing. Not a peep from the Alliance Military or anyone else. With other, more stressful worries pushed to the back of his mind, he had hoped the restoring of power to the Normandy would change their current situation. But still, nothing. No peep, no crackle of static, no burst of indistinct comm chatter. Nothing.

His tightened fist struck the console. "Son of a bitch!"

"Relax, Joker."

A hand touched his shoulder, but it wasn't the person he expected. That person was lost. Stuck on the Citadel when it went _ka-blewey!_ And who's fault was that? If he could have stayed, just a fraction of a second longer, he could have gotten her off the doomed station. He knew he could have. But just as before, the hand that touched his shoulder now was touching his shoulder then.

" _Joker…it's time to go."_

 _Time to go, my ass._ It's what he should have said then. He wouldn't be sitting here now, regretting every decision he made since the order to evacuate the system was given. Choosing to leave…not turning one glance in EDI's direction before…

He loved Ashley Williams to death, despite her gung-ho Alliance idealism, but she was no Commander Shepard. And right now, he just wanted to slap her hand away.

"We don't have time to relax," he said instead. "Commander Shepard is out there."

Ashley walked into his field of view, unintentionally blocking the space EDI had chosen at his right. He needed that space open; wouldn't allow anyone in the seat since they had taken her away. He needed to see it. The sight of that empty space gave him impetus to keep trying.

"Yes, and we're stuck out here, wherever here is," Ashley said. "Even if we get communications back, it will be some time before we get the FTL drive core back online."

" _When_ we get communications back, I'll be back there in engineering helping Tali and Adams get this ship off the ground."

"Joker, you're a pilot, not an engineer."

Ashley Williams, always the realist. Joker sneered. "Maybe, but I know the Normandy like a mother knows the difference between her kids naked asses. I don't care what I have to do, I'm going to get the Normandy purring again and I'm going to get us home."

He could see it in her eyes. Ashley was trying to decide if it was worth it to push him or not, whether she should pull rank and tell him he'll do what he's told. His return stare should tell her exactly what she'd get in return. Jeff "Joker" Moreau wasn't one to be messed with, not right this minute anyway. Higher rank still rested in the hands of his commander as long as he believed she was still alive, and he wasn't beneath telling Ashley so if she persisted.

Thankfully, she didn't. With a sigh, she walked around to the back of his chair. "Alright." Her voice was tight, resolute. "What channels have you tried so far?"

Joker responded with his atypical decorum. He was still an Alliance officer, and for now, she was his commanding officer. "Systems Alliance, the Turian Hierarchy, the Salarian STG. Hell, I've even tried the Cerberus channels. I get nothing. Zip."

"What about T'Soni?"

"I haven't heard from her yet, but I would assume, she hasn't gotten any farther than I have."

Ashley came around to his left, her expression introspective.

"You've only tried official channels?"

He knew by the furrowing of her brow that she was thinking of home, of her mother and three sisters. There had been no word from her sisters, let alone from his own father and sister, at the time of the attack on Earth.

"Other than trying to contact a few salarian colony worlds to see if my sister made it off Tiptree, yeah. Why? You got an idea?"

Ash shot him a glance. "Official channels may be down. Try Earth. Any open comm you can find…but try this one first." She prattled off the numbers of a personal channel. Joker didn't have to guess. She told him. "It's Abby's. If anybody's huddle by the comm waiting for a communiqué, it would be my little sister."

"I thought you've been trying to reach her…with no success."

"You're right, but there's always a chance. Right? There's always hope?"

The last moments before the Citadel lit up passed in front his mind where EDI's last words weren't just an echo. He smiled. "Yeah, there's always hope."

Joker's fingers flew across the display and patched in the code.

EEE

 ** _H_** ow long she sat there contemplating the child inside her and its future (a future that may well be no future at all), Liara could not say. Chakwas had been right. She still found it hard to believe that this was real, but she was becoming more and more territorial at the thought of the Reapers taking from her the only thing she had left of Shepard. She would kill to protect the life growing within her.

It was a good thing her monitors flashed from static to a brief image of the nearby galaxy, brightening the room, or else she may have sat there on the end of her bed forever. Liara gained her feet, chastising herself for letting Joker do all the work while she sat and lamented. She was anxious to work these potentially baseless fears away. Work had always been a good friend. It was there for her during the dark times when no one else was, when all she had to rely on was herself. It would be there for her now.

The brief burst from the monitors meant that they were close to reestablishing communication. They were her glimpse into the world outside, how she kept in touch with her operatives on the field. She tapped a few commands into her console.

Nothing. The silent static remained.

 _Get your mind back on track, Liara. Think!_

Turning her back on the monitors, she would have looked about the room, searching the next best option, when her eyes fell upon Glyph's station.

 _Of course! What am I thinking?_

With the ship's power restored, Glyph should have returned to functionality. Unlike EDI, Glyph was not a AI, nor was he sentient. Therefore, once the ship had been restored, he should have been brought back to "life." It made little sense for his station to still be dysfunctional. Liara typed in several commands at the info drone's station. Again, nothing. Her fist met the console's surface with surprising force (and at the exact same time as Joker's on the bridge), and uttered a curse only an asari would know. She would have laughed at herself if she could find the humor in the situation. Pounding upon Glyph's workstation as a human might pound upon the chest of another to get the heart beating again. But this was not a physical heart. This was a virtual intelligence. Getting Glyph running again would not be as easy as starting a heart.

"Starting a heart?" Liara said, her voice softly echoing in the quiet of her quarters. She stared at the VI's station. "Maybe it is that easy."

Dropping to all fours, she craned her neck behind the station, checking the power supply. Everything looked fine. No damage. No scoring. Liara returned to her feet.

In the time since she had moved her "work" to the Normandy, there had not been time to make her quarters more livable. This area of the ship had once been home to ex-Cerberus agent Miranda Lawson. Now, this once comfortable living area resembled something akin to a warehouse with a bed shoved awkwardly off to one side. It was more workplace than sleeping quarters. Wires encased in heavy tubing hung above her head, snaked over eye-beams, and lay haphazardly on the floor. Thirty monitors in all took up one wall, while the opposite wall was all computing power. The light that typically lit within them had faded to nearly nothing. Light, which indicated power, bloomed intermittently, glowing dimly and then fading altogether.

Liara watched as the glow increased to a bright white light, the light she had become accustomed to seeing. Then, it sparked, and when it did the monitors behind her flashed as they had a moment ago, and to her left, Glyph's station came to life. But only briefly. The monitors went back to static, and the round shape of Glyph appeared for just a second and then went away.

Here was her problem. There was a short somewhere, damage to her system that must have happened in the crash. Get that fixed and she would be back in business! She clapped her hands together and smiled for the first time since Dr. Chakwas told her the news. Tali would know how to fix it. She could fix anything!

Liara ran for the door, ready to sprint all the way down to Engineering. It didn't matter how many conduits and shafts she would have to—

"That's right! The lifts are running aga—"

Liara stopped short at the door. They had slid open at her command, as they ought to, but barring her exit was a tall and stern-looking prothean.

"I must speak with you."

In his armor, Javik's shoulder width was nearly as wide as the opening. Liara couldn't have squeezed by if she wanted to.

Liara huffed. "Javik, I do not have time for this. There's something more important I—"

"No."

Javik held up two three-fingered hands as though in surrender, but that was the farthest thing from the truth. He hardly knew what the word "surrender" meant. Those two hands were meant to keep her from moving past him. He entered her quarters without waiting for a request and let the doors slide shut behind him before he spoke again.

"There is something I wish to discuss with you more weighty than restoring power to your quarters."

She frowned, seconds passing in which she had to wonder how Javik knew of her power issues. Then, she shook her head. Protheans were far more unique than she had been willing to give them credit for. They were complex, with the ability to learn entire languages simply by physical touch. Nor was that their limit. She recalled how well he had picked up on the feelings of his quarter's former occupant—the krogan, Grunt. Had he picked up on her feelings that quickly? No, there was no time to contemplate this.

"Javik, you do not understand."

"No, _you_ do not understand. I have sensed your inner conflict for hours now. I know of what you've dreamed…for it is also in my mind."

EEE

 ** _J_** eff had once, in jest, encouraged Javik to call himself Prothy the Prothean. It was a light-hearted joke, meant to lighten the mood of everyone aboard during dark times. Javik had not been amused, suggesting to Jeff that he felt encouraged only to throw him out of the airlock. Even that had been funny at the time. Joker certainly got a good laugh out of it.

Javik had changed a lot since then. He had not only been a new crew member to the Normandy (and new crew members often went through a period of unwelcome initiation) but having been locked within a stasis pod for over fifty thousand years, he was quite new to their world as well. His four golden eyes had seen a lot in his "cycle." War with the Reapers in his time had hardened him. He knew nothing of being a child, of enjoying life. From his birth to the time of his stasis, war with the Reapers was a way of life. Loosening him up, allowing him to develop a sense of empathy for other races, had taken time. He wasn't perfect, by any means. He still had a good bit of shaping up to do if there was time left. But he remained as stoic as when she first met him, and Liara felt this stoicism would always be with him, whether they conquered the Reapers or not. Javik was scarred. A life of war and carnage could do that to a person.

This was the only reason she felt obliged to allow Javik into her quarters. Despite her misgivings about his personality, she would always see him as a man tarnished by the effects of war and as a boy deprived of his childhood.

Still, he remained Javik, blunt and tactless. She wanted to slap him, but the hard, gaunt shape of his face and the carapace atop his head would make for a blow more damaging to herself than to the prothean.

Liara balled her fists. "How dare you? You force your way into my quarters and admit you have had access to my mind without my knowledge… _or permission!"_

Javik shook his angular head, not in disagreement, but in vexation. "You misunderstand as usual, Dr. T'Soni. I have not accessed your mind. It is _you_ who has forced your mind upon _me_."

" _Me?_ You are insane."

"The intrusion was subtle, at first. I tried to ignore it. A bit of indigestion from this ship's synthesized food, I told myself, or perhaps I was imagining things. But no. The minute Lt. Commander Williams sent you to your quarters to rest, my mind was no longer my own."

Liara took two steps back, astonished. "You mean…?"

"Yes," Javik answered with one nod. "You reached out and my mind was the only one capable of receiving." A ghost of a smile touched his thin lips. "You are almost as powerful as a prothean beacon."

"You saw my dreams?"

"I said _almost_ as powerful. I did not see everything. The images came in flashes that were hard to comprehend. I had trouble making sense of what I had seen. It is why I have not come to you until now. After your last… _dream_ …I saw more than I expected."

"You saw…" Liara began, but could hardly breathe. She swallowed and continued. "You saw the Citadel and…"

"And Shepard amongst its ruins. It was as clear to me as you are now."

"How—how is this possible?"

"I have long pondered this question myself. Had I not sensed it the moment I first met you, even I would not believe it. You and the commander share an improbable connection. I hesitate to speak to the possibility, but I am beginning to question if what you saw was truly a dream…and not a vision."

"A vision?"

Hearing the two words together hit her queerly. It was the meaning she had been searching for since the dreams started, and yet, it sounded wrong coming from the prothean. Liara refused to allow herself to latch onto its oddity as though she were drowning. To believe what Javik said meant there was hope Shepard might still be alive. As much as she wanted that to be true, she did not want that sort of hope. That sort of hope can only lead to ruin. She wanted answers. She wanted truth.

"Please," Liara said with a disdainful shake of her head. "I do not believe you have developed enough in this cycle to have gained a spiritual side. What do you mean, a vision? How can you be sure it's not just a product of grief or fear?"

Javik's straight and emotionally impenetrable face had not changed since he waltzed into her quarters, but he now held out his hand. "There is only one way to find out."

"No." Liara stepped backward again until she felt her heels touch the base of her bed.

"Let me see your dreams the way you have seen them."

"Stay away from me."

Javik's pointed brow drew together, but he did not lower his hand. "You seek answers, Liara. Let us find them together."

There was no where left for her to go unless she were to jump childlike onto the bed, dodge around him and run out of the room…which would be ridiculous and it was not the way of an asari in the least. An asari bravely faced whatever trouble lay before her. As a pureblood, she wanted to do the same.

Yet…

"I do not—I am not ready," she said, hating the sound of weakness in her voice.

"Neither am I," Javik said, his hand raised higher, poised to take hold of the side of her face. "For the first time in my life, there is hope, and I do not want that to end."

"Wait—"

Her voice was indeed weak. He was moving in closer and she was giving in. She knew the minute the flesh of his palm touched her cheek, she would know the truth. Had the Citadel been destroyed? Was Shepard alive or dead? Were the Reapers a memory or a looming threat?

"Do not be afraid, Liara. All will soon be clear."

Flesh met flesh. Liara took hold of the arm that held her in its grip and only briefly did she feel his other hand meet the opposite side of her face. The monitors flashed again. Glyph appeared for a millisecond and then disappeared. The room went dark. Whether with the vanishing of light or with the closing of her eyes, she could not be sure, but with two words the room spun and the dream enveloped her.

" _Embrace eternity!"_

EEE

 ** _F_** _rom the void beam points of light. They sparkle and shimmer from many millions of lightyears away. Like the tendrils of tentacles, they pull, and like a voice echoing through a distant valley, they call. She is moved to follow them, to be led along by them._

 _Moving fast, at the speed of light, they surround and move about her like snowflakes. Here amongst their radiance, she hears but one call. She finds it, not with sight or sound. Its light is too bright, its call too deafening. She hears with her body as some species breathe through their skin. Sight is granted through a level of consciousness she did not know existed. There, hidden amongst other points of light like a gemstone buried in rubble, is the one calling. It comes to her as a child runs to its mother. Its light grows brighter. Bending. Stretching. Bright as the sun coming over the horizon. It overtakes her, washing her in a blinding light._

 _This is what it must feel like to be born, she imagines._

 _But this is where the dream always changes. Light becomes dark, and dark becomes a raging inferno. The galaxy zooms before her as she has seen it for centuries, though it is not the same. Everywhere there is flame, from the Athena Nebula to the Hades Nexus. Few systems remain untouched by death and destruction. She is not pulled home, however. The call pulls her toward the southern quadrant, toward the place of the final battle, to hell._

 _She pulls back. She does not wish to return there, where memories are still as raw as open wounds, but inexorably the force pulls against her will. She has no choice. It leads her toward three infinitesimal points of light. The Earth and its moon, and the one lodged between them—the Citadel. She sees what she had not seen before, or saw but pushed so far away as to be forgotten._

 _The Citadel's arms stretch out toward a galaxy it once claimed as offspring. Broken, silently smoldering, and twisting toward an unfortunate end. It does not reach to welcome back its long lost child. It cries for help, but there is no one left to embrace it as mother. The time for a gathering of intergalactic children is over._

 _The Citadel is dying._

 _In vacuum, above a dark and burning world, an indistinct voice calls. But how can that be? All about is death. Metallic debris, once the pride of galactic nations, spins through the void, impacting fragments of Reapers. But the voice is not that of Sovereign or Harbinger. They have been silenced for the first time in millenniums._

 _The voice, pushing through the empty silence of space, moves not among the debris. It comes from within the dead arms of the Citadel, and like gravity pulls one's feet to the ground, the voice carries her forward toward the center of the Citadel and the tower. Here, fires burn, smoke rises, and windows are the dark eyes of the soul. The tower at the center of the Citadel generates little life. The vacuum of space remains banished, but it threatens, it pounds upon the walls. Gravity has become as light as a bouncing ball. Yet, within this dying flower, a voice still calls._

 _Forward, she moves, past lush trees and vibrant green foliage splattered with hints of blue and purple and red. Through the scent of grass. Over the melody of flowing water. The flicker of unnatural light. Steps littered with debris. Pathways charred with streaks of weapon's fire. The stench of smoke and blood. The rubble and the ruin of bodies. Onward and upward, she moves along the length of the tower._

 _It is here the voice has called her, soft as a whisper. Though it is stronger up here, she struggles to hear its pleas above burning fire, rising smoke and the shaking of the floor beneath her feet._

 _She closes her eyes and listens, the voice like a whisper on the wind. On it, floats her name._

" _Liara," says a voice she could never forget, not in a thousand years._

 _Words will not come. Her mouth cannot move. She wants to scream out her name, but lips that had once felt tangible enough to speak, now felt disembodied. The voice of that one alone has captured her, imprisoned her within it._

" _I knew you would not abandon me."_

 _Imprisoned though she may be, Liara cannot condemn her. She is content to float within the prison she had created, to become one with her. Her voice caresses like a lover's hand._

" _All is dark, but I am not alone. We are two heartbeats, you and I. Forever one."_

 _The voice envelopes her in its arms, calming her, reassuring her that all will soon be made right again. The threat has passed. The war is over._

 _But the voice, her voice, draws back. A shadow hangs over her prison._

" _Do not look for me. I do not demand a savior. I ask only for forgiveness, and for the chance to give you one last gift before the lights go out."_

 _Even as the voice retreats into the void, it reaches out, the lover's hand caressing her abdomen and a warmth blooms deep within. One last gift._

 _NO!_

 _The word does not form itself. Too late, she realizes she had truly been captured, imprisoned from speaking, from denying the message that had been sent. Focusing all her will, Liara fights to break free, to voice her disapproval. This cannot happen, not after all they had been through together. As one buried beneath the ground, she claws her way out of the prison, pulling upon the tendrils of the tangible, upon touch, taste, hearing, smell, and lastly, upon sight._

 _Her eyes are open, but the rubble is not before her. The rubble is now above her. Laying prone upon her back, she sees space above through the ruin of the Crucible, and it is as dark as the passage of night. Soon it will be dark forever. The lights within the physical being, manufactured and installed by another, are going out. One by one, they are beginning to shut down like clocks slowly clicking towards doom._

 _She raises one pink-skinned hand. It is covered in blood the color of crimson, as dark as the sunsets on Thessia. She is dying._

" _Liara," she calls. "I love you."_

 _She has not broken free as she had thought. She is still trapped within her, and when Shepard goes, she will go also. That they might spend their last moments together is a comforting thought, but there is another voice calling, one not ready to let life go so easily. It is the warmth deep within. Her child. It begs her to open her eyes, to sit up, to breathe._

' _Liara,' it calls. 'Go back where you belong. Do not let what is dying take you with it. Come back to us. Wake up, Liara…Liara…'_

EEE

 _ **"W**_ ake up!"

Her cheek stung. Had the fire reached her? Was she burning?

"Wake up, asari!"

The voice was alien, unfamiliar, thick and deeply accented. Someone pulled at her arms, demanded that she rise. She tried to fight, to pull from its grip, but it would not let go. He yanked her to her feet whether she liked it or not.

"On your feet, soldier! Wake up!"

She felt the sting again, but it was not the sting of fire. The ground was not shaking and the smell of smoke passed like the whiff of a cigarette. The vacuum of space was still but a heartbeat away, yet gravity pulled at the soles of her shoes the way a dying person clings to life. She was not alone. Two strong hands gripped her shoulders.

Liara opened her eyes and stared into four golden ones.

"Javik…where…" His face had not changed since the last time she saw him, which felt like a century, but there was expression in them she had not seen before. Surprise.

"You…you are with child…"

"Yes…I…" It was true, wasn't it? _"…one last gift before the lights go out."_ Her knees gave way and Javik caught her just in time.

"I did not know," he said, leading her toward the edge of her bed and forcing her to sit after he had forced her to her feet. He knelt beside her. "Perhaps we should not have joined minds, but I am glad that we did. Do you remember?"

Lightheaded, she shook her head. "I am not sure. I need to rest."

"No." Javik's two strong hands gripped her shoulders once again. "There is no time to rest. You must remember. Tell me what you saw."

"Javik, please. Leave me." Liara pulled away. The images which lingered were strong, like daggers of truth in her heart. She did not wish to speak of them. It hurt too much to acknowledge.

"Think, T'Soni! Picture the Citadel in your mind."

Yanking her arm from his grip, she stood abruptly on shaky legs. "I do not have to picture it! I _see it_ as clear as day!"

Javik stood to catch her. "Then you saw what I saw. Lifeless Reapers. She did it! The long war of my life is over. The Reapers are dead!"

"But…" The sight of Javik swam as though she had been plunged underwater. She could hardly speak for the rending of her heart. Blood rushed in her ears and all sensation but pain left her. "She…she is gone," she said, her voice as fragile and broken as glass. "I have lost her again. I cannot…"

Never in her life had she imagined she would seek comfort from a prothean. While digging, searching for clues or answers to prothean life and culture on Therum, if someone had come along before the geth had to tell her all that would transpire in her life until this moment, she would have thought them insane. She—pureblood Liara T'Soni, daughter of a Matriarchal politician, who sought solitude in prothean archaeology—would find herself embroiled in a galactic war between organic and artificial life, and become a ruthless information broker, all while falling for the conflict's most central figure, it's hero? She would have told this soothsayer to find a more gainful occupation. Not only had the galaxy's conflicts or its politics not concerned her, she saw no need for romance of any sort than with her work, nor was she ready to propagate. She wanted to live out her life carefully discovering the life of an ancient species, devoted to her work until, at a time in the future, when she was ready, she could settle down and think about love and children. She could set them around her and tell them about the protheans, about their lives, their accomplishments, and their impact on the galaxy.

None of that was to be. Their very existence seemed, at the time, to have set the future in motion. What she had projected as her future was merely a dream. This future, seeking comfort in the arms of a real life prothean, that was truth. Liara collapsed in his arms.

His voice, not so unfamiliar, not so alien, filled her ears. "That is where you are wrong, Liara."

She would have asked, "What do you mean?" But for her tears and her sobbing, the words would not come. She was as mute as she had been in the dream.

Javik continued. "I will tell you what _I_ saw. Amongst the turians, and the salarians, and the asari bodies left behind upon the grounds of the Citadel like refuse, I saw the bodies of husks, and of asari and batarian abominations. I saw death on both sides, but I also saw life. The Citadel still breaths…" Javik released her, but took her face in both his hands. "…as does Commander Shepard."

"But…I saw…"

"I told you. You and the Commander share a connection that runs far deeper than mere bondmates. I am sure of that, and I am sure Shepard never believed her plea would reach you, but it has. What you saw was not her death. What you saw was her clinging to life upon the Citadel along with millions of others."

Liara shook her head, releasing herself from his grasp. "How can you be sure?"

His sigh was one of frustration, but his eyes were no less intense. "Fifty thousand years ago, the last of my people huddled within the Citadel to ensure the Reapers did not compromise the station for future generations. I do not believe the VI on Ilos. My people did not starve to death. No matter what they had to endure to accomplish it, they would have completed their mission, and then they would have taken their own lives. I am the last of my kind. After me, there will be no other. Were there no Reapers to destroy, I would have taken my life on Eden Prime just as my ancestors had."

Javik turned away and faced the bank of monitors, turning the rest of him into a silhouette, the lonely figure of a prothean. "In these last hours, as we wait for _official news_ of our victory or of our demise, I have contemplated what I would do when the news came. Good or bad, victory or defeat, there is nothing left for me in this galaxy. My quarters are prepared in the event we never leave this planet. Whatever the outcome, I had planned to take my life. Not out of pity or despair, but out of honor. I wish to join my people. I was planning the method of my death when the first images of your vision came to me. I saw the Citadel. I saw dead Reapers, and I caught the first glimpse of Shepard. The images eclipsed all other thought, all other plans."

Javik turned around. The fire had not gone from his eyes as she had thought. It had intensified. He invaded her personal space once again in his ungracious manner, but instead of gripping her arms, he took both her hands in his. "The fight is not over, Liara. We have one last mission. One that has given me hope—perhaps there is a life for me out there, after all. Because Shepard is alive. She has survived despite every stone that has been hurled at her. I have to believe that if _she_ has endured, then so can the last prothean in the galaxy."

Since the very beginning of this journey, from the minute she met Shepard through the haze of a barrier field, Liara had encountered moments of dread, of laughter and friendship, of complete terror, and of the purest bliss. This moment rivaled all others for a space in her memory. Javik's words had become for Liara a moment of true clarity. She saw her dream through his eyes, and there was harmony.

The power surged again. Behind Javik, the monitors came briefly to life, displaying the galaxy, but it wasn't all that had life. A ball of light appeared out of the corner of her eye. Liara almost jumped right out of her skin.

"Dr. T'Soni," said the digitized sphere with its monophonic voice. "I have several urgent messages for you."

The voice of Joker over ship communications followed it. "Liara, you're needed on the bridge. Pronto!"

And right behind him, a ship-wide communication with the voice of the Normandy's current commander, Ashley Williams. "All senior officers, report to the war room by eighteen-hundred."

Despite the call of voices from all sides, Liara knew only three words and they filled her heart with enough light to pull her from the depths of despair.

 _Shepard is alive._

* * *

 **Three followers so far and the hits have been pretty good, but I'd like to know what you think. Please leave a review.**


	6. Only ONE Rule

**I've not read all the comics or novels that serve as backstory to everything we as players experienced in-game, but I did do a lot of research on the Mass Effect Wiki about those stories. I've tried to incorporate each character's past in these stories, while also adding my own original layers to their backstory. You'll notice it in this chapter, and in others as we move along. Enjoy!**

 **As always, thank you for the follows, favorites and reviews I've received so far.**

* * *

 **MASS EFFECT: ONE**

* * *

 **Only ONE Rule**

 **The Citadel – After Endgame**

 ** _S_** alarian, bloodied, writhing in pain on a cot upon the floor, a ragged laceration ripped open upon his slender torso. Despite the efforts of the white-coated medics trying to save his life, blood gushed from him. Green and viscous, it puddled on the floor beneath the cot. The salarian shuddered. His black eyes rolled back. Seconds later, he was still.

This was what Aria saw when she opened her eyes.

A red-haired medic with green salarian blood splattered upon her shoes, sighed and closed the salarian's eyes. "I'm sorry," she said in a heavily accented voice to the two salarians at his side. "I did all I could. He's gone."

Aria watched as one salarian attempted to console the other. If salarian eyes could water and drop tears of sorrow, both would have. Instead, they held each other and expressed their mourning in the way of salarians.

Aria breathed. It hurt, but not from any physical pain. Her eyes stung again, but this time it wasn't from the trickle of blood in her eye. In her mind's eye, she saw Liselle. Throat cut. Bled out. Dead. For all she knew, the dead salarian was son to the other two. She had once witnessed the same as they had—the death of a child.

Clenching her teeth, Aria choked the emotion surging within. This was not the place for it. She forced herself to focus her thoughts and her sight elsewhere. Problem was, sights not much better than the dead salarian surrounded her. Until recently, this area of the Citadel wasn't a place she knew well. Two turian C-Sec officers had dragged her out of Council Chambers to the obvious delight of everyone who had witnessed her cuffed and subdued like a petty thief. She refused to think about the wide-eyed surprise and the nods of approval she saw in the people on the embassy level of the Presidium. She had to focus on _now_ , on what she could see.

The Citadel Embassies had been converted into a makeshift hospital. The wounded had been triaged. To her right were the walking wounded, those with minor injuries, cuts or burns. Next to them, the seriously injured; broken bones, lacerations, head trauma—stuff you could recover from given time. Far to her left, blankets lay on the floor with the distinct form of bodies beneath. There were far too many to count.

Aria realized, perhaps a tad too late, where she lay. Here, near damaged vending machines still smoking from whatever weapon fire they had taken, were the gravely injured, the ones who probably weren't going to make it. The evidence was the dead salarian a few paces away from her.

"Shit," she mumbled and forced herself to sit up.

It was a bad idea. Her head swam as if she were on the open sea, bobbing up and down between heavy swells. Her arms shook like the brittle knees of an old man as she tried to hold herself up, and her face twisted in repugnance to realize she had been tossed onto the floor like garbage.

 _That bastard Bailey! Where the hell is he?!_

Her legs were like wood. A purplish liquid seeped from the wrapped wound on her left thigh. For how long? The answer was in the collecting puddle beneath her leg. Aria pushed herself backward with weakened arms until she could rest her head against the wall. She sighed, trying to ignore the pain in her leg and the mush her stomach had become. Good thing she hadn't eaten in a while or she would have lost it all on the floor of the embassy.

How does one the like of Aria T'Loak wrap her mind around finding herself triaged with the dying? Not very well. She wanted to scream, but she no more had the strength for screaming than she did for standing. With shaky hands, she patted down her sides, looking for a weapon. If it came down to it, she would do what she must. She wouldn't die like the salarian, writhing in pain while people fussed over her and watched.

But she had no weapon. Where was her gun? What had Bailey done?

She had to move. She couldn't stay here. If she had to go out, Aria would go out in battle.

Pulling her good leg up, she tried to use it and the wall to force herself onto her feet. She rose several inches, searching for a handhold, something to help pull herself up, but there was nothing, not even a guardrail. She slid back to the floor with a thump, rocketing pain up through her leg like a bullet, and the world swam before her eyes once again.

"Don't try to move," the heavily accented voice of the redhead said. "Here, this should help."

The electronic sound of an omni-tool reached her ears, bringing with it the soothing flow of medi-gel. It pulsed throughout her body, lessening the pain and stemming the flow of blood from her leg wound.

"Get me out of here." Aria had hoped to speak with a strong, authoritative voice. Instead, her command sounded like a desperate plea.

"I'm afraid that is not going to be possible. Would you like a sedative to keep you comfortable?"

Aria sneered and spoke in a rasp, "Do I look like someone who wants to be made comfortable? _Get me out of here._ "

"I'm sorry, but—"

"Dr. Michel," said a more familiar voice. "You'll not find a more disagreeable patient than this one. See to your other patients, doctor. I'll deal with her."

As beautiful as a shimmer of light ghosting through a nebula of stars. That's what the sight of Tevos was to Aria. Tevos didn't look as regal as she had seen her hours ago in council chambers. Her red and white dress was tattered, singed, painted with blood of different colors. She was cut and bruised, but more importantly, she was alive.

The doctor Aria had mistaken for a simple medic, nodded once to Tevos and left to tend to her easier patients.

Sitting with her back against the wall, and her leg trussed up like an Armistice Day turkey, Aria could almost forget the world had gone to hell in the final hours. She could forget the Citadel was in ruins and most of the people who called it home were either dead or wishing they were. Her eyes only knew of the woman who knelt before her. What a mistake she had made in turning her back on Tevos, for it would seem Tevos had not once turned her back on Aria.

Tevos touched one hand to Aria's temple. There was such affection in her eyes, but she doused it, returned the councilor's mask and asked, "How do you feel?"

"Like shit."

When she had commanded Bailey to pull whatever had lodged itself into her leg, she thought it would be her dénouement, her exit to stage left. That was not the case. With Tevos in her sights, she should at least feel grateful not to be dead, but here she was huddled back in the place where it had all started—near council chambers. Though she wasn't cuffed or dampened, she might as well be. She could hardly walk and her wound, despite the doctor's ministrations, continued to seep blood. The only thing keeping her alert and free of pain was the medi-gel.

Somehow, Bailey had gotten her here; carried her, dragged her. Who knew? It didn't matter anyway. What mattered was whether or not the final explosion, the one that knocked her and Bailey from their perch in the most godforsaken area of the Citadel she had ever encountered, was a good sign or a bad one.

"What happened? How did I get here?"

Tevos shook her head just as Bailey appeared over her shoulder. "No time for questions," she said and rose to her full height. She looked away. "Dr. Michel."

The doctor pulled herself away from attending a patient. "Yes, Madam Councilor?"

"The commander and I will be taking this patient off your hands."

Aria frowned. "What's going on?"

The doctor as well seemed suspicious, but who was she to question the will of Councilor Tevos. She gave her consent with a nod and went back to her patient, all in time for Bailey to scoop Aria up in his arms.

"Put me down, you bastard," she demanded in a weak voice. "I can walk."

"Yeah?" Bailey said with a smirk. "Next lie you'll tell me is how safe you feel in my arms."

Aria would have reared back a shaky hand and punched Bailey with what little strength she had left were it not for Tevos. She took Aria's balled fist in her hand and shook her lovely blue head.

"Conserve your strength, my friend. You'll need it in the coming hours."

Aria reluctantly rested against Bailey's shoulder. She couldn't hold her head up any longer. Blood loss had made her as weak as a ragdoll. "What are you talking about?" she whispered.

As they slipped past the throngs of walking wounded and up the stairs toward council chambers, Aria held the hand of Tevos and listened as Bailey spoke.

"Sorry I had to dump you off like that, but that Dr. Michel is a hard woman to argue with. She wouldn't let you out of her sight until I got council approval to move you. We've got to get you well, Aria. The councilors have their own special brand of medi-gel that'll work wonders on your injury."

Keeping her eyes open was becoming a difficult task. "What's the rush?"

The doors to the council chambers sat haphazardly open, and Bailey moved through it. Aria heard someone say something about a blood transfusion before she felt herself being laid upon a cushiony bed (a couch by the sensation of her heels butting up against the armrest). Her head felt like mush. She tried to feel the breath moving through her lungs, to clench and unclench her fists, to keep herself awake, because she could feel herself slipping into unconsciousness. Like a slow acting poison moving through the bloodstream, oblivion wanted to envelop her, to wrap her in its soothing arms. The soft voice of Tevos was its accelerant.

"There's no rush."

Yet, like a dose of adrenaline came the scraggly voice of Bailey. "The hell there isn't."

Aria pushed away the soothing arms and forced her eyes open. Bailey stood over her, a look of terrible reality crossing his hard features.

He knelt. "Aria, you need to hear this. Maybe it'll push you to keep living. By all accounts, the Reapers and their friends are all dead, but it doesn't mean we're in any better shape than we were when they were alive. We don't know what the hell that explosion was, but it has severely damaged the Citadel. We're starting to lose power all over the station, and we're already caught in Earth's gravity well. I don't have to tell you what will happen if..."

No, he didn't have to tell her. Aria couldn't hold on long enough to hear either way. The arms of oblivion had snagged her back into it clutches. The last thing she remembered was a flurry of medics surrounding her and the prick of a needle into her skin. Aria had been cornered. Cornered by oblivion, cornered by the determined voice of Bailey, by the comforting hand of Tevos, cornered in a place where everyone wanted something from her even though she had nothing to give. Cornered…

 **EEE**

 **Before Endgame**

…like a rat in a cage.

 ** _M_** ake that, a prisoner in a cell.

Once, many, _many_ years ago, Aria had found herself confined within one of those illustrious establishments. Locked up for crimes she had most definitely committed. Her younger days had been rife with trouble and the clang of prison doors. As the years passed, Aria brought her wildness under control. She learned to harness her violent tendencies by training as a commando, putting her prowess to work for her, gaining lucrative jobs, stepping up the criminal ladder. Her previous reputation as a hot head vanished along with her identity. For a time, no one even knew she existed, and those who had known her (Tevos, for example) wondered if she was still alive.

Until the day she took over Omega.

The coup took time and careful planning. She hadn't laid low for nearly a century for nothing. Time enough for those she used to run with to die off or forget about her. And during that time, she watched Omega like a hawk.

Infiltration had been simple. She hired on as an exotic dancer in Afterlife, enduring her share of horny males, drunk on whatever liquor was on hand at the time, reaching, grabbing, pulling. As they say, 'it's a dirty job, but someone has to do it.' Aria stepped up to the plate. She took the job the other girls wouldn't. Anything that would get her a better foothold or catch the eye of certain individuals. It took time, several years of a dancer's hell, but eventually, Aria found the next rung on the ladder to the top. He was a turian and he owned Afterlife.

Nazalus thought himself as powerful as Omega's ruler at the time, but Aria knew exactly what he was—another randy turian. She used her powers of persuasion to catch his eye, and used her powers of deception to turn him into her lover, while she worked to secure secret alliances among some of his men. When the time came, Nazalus never knew what hit him. One day he was alive and living the highlife as the owner of Omega's most popular nightclub, and the next day he wasn't.

It took longer to wrestle control of Omega from its ruler, a krogan she had derisively renamed _The Patriarch_ after she dethroned him. She kept him alive, though. Someone needed to stand as an example of her power.

So much for power. The news vids were probably screaming in victory over the sight of Omega's ruler being led away in cuffs. Though her omni-cuffs were discretely covered, she knew for a fact that bitch reporter Khalisah al-Jilani caught her on camera with a turian C-Sec officer on either side of her. The implications were obvious! What would the people of Omega, still reeling over the Cerberus coup, think of her now?

Sitting in the back of a skycar, secure in its destination to C-Sec headquarters, and its prison cells, Aria weighed her options. Incapacitating the turian next to her and jumping from the skycar wasn't one of them. Her mission, now that she knew the location of her ship, was to get to the Destiny Ascension's docking bay as soon as possible, but first, she needed to break Bray out of C-Sec control.

Aria smirked inwardly. She could hear Nyreen's voice as clearly as if she were sitting right next to her. "I always knew there was a good person beneath your selfish, power-hungry façade, Aria."

There were few people in the galaxy who could say they "knew" Aria T'Loak. Tevos used to be one of them, but Nyreen knew her best. Still, Nyreen hadn't known everything. Aria _was_ selfish. She _was_ power-hungry. One thing she wasn't, however, was stupid. She couldn't take on C-Sec by herself, even with the Reapers on their way as a distraction. She needed Bray, not only as her pilot, but as her right hand. If breaking him out meant having to break herself out first, then so be it. If anyone knew their way off of the Citadel as surreptitiously as their way on, it was Aria.

Thus, she let them take her to headquarters. Obediently, she let them lead her by the arm, up the ramp that, according to what she heard, was the very same ramp Shepard had accessed to fight off the Citadel's Cerberus coup. (Aria didn't have to imagine what that must have been like.) Up the stairs and through the door, through central processing where she willingly answered the human officer's litany of questions all while deceptively peering at his computer terminal.

These idiots! No wonder it was easy for Cerberus to attack, and this one seemed particularly distracted. Thoughts of Reapers, no doubt. His hands were shaky. His eyes weren't on his work. How easily he let slip Bray's exact location, and the location of the rest of her men. They were all on the same block.

 _Well, this ought to be easy._

 **EEE**

 ** _T_** he turian officer gave her a shove before closing the cell door. Aria capably maintained her footing, and gave the officer a dressing down that would have shaken the knees of some of her lesser men. It didn't seem to affect this one. She lacked a handy sidearm for added effect. Nor could she threaten to crush him with her biotics, thanks to the wonderful new bangles C-Sec had given her.

She raised the glowing mass-effect-generated cuffs to the retreating turian officer, hoping he was as dumb as he was unconcerned. "Aren't you going to remove these?"

His brows drew together in a frown. "How stupid do you think I am?"

"You really don't want me to answer that," Aria smirked and lowered her hands.

The turian officer shook his thick head and left the way he had come in—through a sliding door that locked behind him as he went through it. _That's right,_ she thought, _keep walking._

First step, inspect the surroundings. The C-Sec officer had brought her to what they called a holding cell, until, as he said, "…we can find out what to do with her." This was a state-of-the-art cell. No iron bars. No keys. Why would there be? This is the Citadel. Her jail cell was one big mass effect field. Yes, an actual cell with doors made of a material similar to glass entombed her, but the mass effect field acted as a padlock. Easy to activate or deactivate from the console on the opposite side of the room. Next to the console was a chair, which meant someone might come back. She didn't have much time.

Second step…

Aria eyed the toilet in the corner of her cell with a frown. She couldn't see them, but surely, cameras watched her from all angles. She had to be quick, and not draw attention to herself at the same time. Finding a seat on a cot next to a washbasin, Aria carefully began to remove several synthetic pieces from her clothing. C-Sec could dampen her biotic abilities, but they could not dampen the movement of her fingers…nor her will to survive.

After the events on Omega, deceived by the Illusive Man and Petrovsky into believing they only advanced upon her space station to help with the invasion of Reaper adjutants, Aria had made a few adjustments to her wardrobe. Never again would she find herself in biotic restraints and not have the ability to break free of them. It took a considerable amount of credits to fund the building of the device, and at the speed in which she wanted it completed. Money was no object, not in comparison to freedom and power.

Twenty in all, a few of them tucked secretly into the cuff of her jacket, each decorative piece harnessed within it components that, when brought together, formed an rectangular device similar in function to an omni-tool, but small enough to fit in the palm of her hand and become relatively unnoticeable when viewed through the distorted lens of a camera.

Its power source? Also hidden in her clothing. At her waist, a strip of leather that acted as a makeshift belt was ornamented with two circular metallic embellishments, one on either side of her pelvis. It was fashionable, but also discreet. No one would have guessed the embellishments were mini power cells, capable of giving life to a hacking device. This little thing could not only break her free of her bonds, but had the power to hack systems and unlock doors. Aria knew its potential. She had already tested it on Citadel defenses to smuggle her and her men onto the space station. Now it was time to see how well it worked on—

Her fingers were gripping the embellishment when the entire station came to a shuddering stop.

In a perfect galaxy, the Citadel's established inertia negation would act as a shock absorber, countering the effects of sudden deceleration. Of course, if she were in a perfect galaxy, the Reapers wouldn't exist, and she wouldn't be a "pirate queen." She would be Queen. She wasn't in a perfect galaxy.

Gravity took a one second vacation. As though with strong arms, it lifted Aria off the cot and into the air. Momentum, acting as a powerful biotic, threw Aria to the floor. Instinctively, she opened her palms to catch herself, and the hacking device flew from her grip. It skittered across the floor, hit the mass effect field and…

The room went black. Klaxons sounded. Red lights flashed. Consoles flickered and restarted. Aria couldn't see a thing, but she heard the device shatter into its different pieces.

"No!"

Scrambling cautiously to her knees, worried gravity might give up on her once more, Aria blindly felt along the floor, struggling to search out the pieces so she could make them whole again. But the room was as dark as night. The red flashing lights were not bright enough to illuminate the pieces scattered across the floor of her cell. Four, six, nine pieces. It was all her blind searching could locate.

Her head hit the rim of the toilet when the holding cell doors opened, letting in more red light and her turian jailer. He ran straight for the console and the small armory next to it, extracting an extra weapon and several rounds of ammunition. He paid little attention to her or the pieces she held in her hands.

"What's happening?"

The turian offered one fleeting glance. "You're smart, woman. Guess!"

Yes, she was, and she could guess easily. Time had drawn incredibly short.

Aria banged the mass effect field with her cuffs. "Get me out of here _now!"_

The turian ignored her and headed for the door.

Her eyes tracked him like blue darts, determined to meet their mark. "You can't leave me defenseless in here!"

He halted in the door, checked to see if the corridor was clear, then turned back to her momentarily. "Actually, _Pirate Queen,_ I can." The turian cleared the doorway and disappeared.

Dumbfounded, seconds passed wherein Aria couldn't speak, but it didn't take long for the rage to boil within her. Her blue eyes turned black, and were it not for the dampeners strapped to her wrists, she would have sent out a biotic blast that could knock down walls.

" _You son of a bitch!"_

Harsh language was all she had, but a million curses in all the different languages of the galaxy would not get her out of here. Though the turian wouldn't speak of it, the Citadel was apparently under another's control, and this time it wasn't Cerberus. This was the work of only one entity— _the Reapers._ In the skycar on the way to C-Sec HQ, Aria had calculated she had at least fifteen minutes to get free, get her men and find her way to the ship through tunnels and back-alley corridors. Her fifteen minutes had come and gone. They had never even existed. The Reapers had come quicker than anyone expected.

Aria set the pieces she found onto the cot and dropped to knees, though not in surrender. Closing her eyes, she shut out the sound of the klaxons, beat her rising fear with a fist of sheer will, and began methodically searching the floor for the missing pieces of her hacking device.

One piece found. Two pieces. Three pieces. Four. She nearly had them all when a nearby explosion shook the ground she kneeled upon. It was close, within C-Sec. Another piece found! Aria continued to search, ignoring the retort of gunfire. Another piece! She wrapped her fingers around it, ignoring what Shepard had told her of the Reapers' attack in the last cycle. The first step in all previous invasions was to wipe out the system of government in place upon the Citadel. Shepard stopped their first attempt to infiltrate the Citadel, and then stopped their second attempt in batarian space, but she was powerless to stop their third and final attempt. Now they were here, on the Citadel, with one collective thought—go after the Council. To do that, they would have to take out Citadel Security, the Council's first line of defense. Aria stood right in their path.

No, she wasn't standing. She was kneeling like a subservient wench, but she had to keep searching. She only needed five more pieces. Just five more—

Gunfire sounded right outside the door. Aria flinched, and cursed herself for doing so. She was running out of time. Scratch that. She was out of time. The door to the holding cell opened. Outlined in the flash of red warning lights was the unmistakable silhouette of an adjutant.

 **EEE**

 ** _N_** o one said it would be easy.

When he thought back to how he "earned" the position of Commander and the events that took place which put him in charge of C-Sec, Bailey knew the road ahead would be tough. He wasn't a hero. He never saw the killing of Executor Pallin as the work of good against evil. Looking back on the deception of Councilor Udina, it was more likely Pallin's death was simply well timed, and well executed. Bailey comforted himself with the thought that it was self-defense. He hadn't killed the executor to help Udina reach his malevolent goals.

Malevolent? Now that he thought about it, hell yeah. Sure, Udina had a legitimate grievance against the Council. They lacked empathy for humans, and the attack on Earth was secondary to their preparing their own home worlds for attack. Damn Udina. Instead of fighting for the rights of humans the way their species ought to, with a dose of ingenuity and a heaping load of determination, the old buzzard chose to cast their entire race in a bad light by siding with one of the worst terrorists groups the galaxy had known in centuries—Cerberus. Those guys were worse than batarian raiders for brutality, and Cerberus' grossest sins were against the very people they claimed to protect. Bastards, the lot of'em. Had Bailey gotten wind of Udina's part in the coup, he would have set the old man straight; he would have made sure he understood, in no uncertain terms, that he was backing the wrong horse.

So, no, it wasn't easy, and Bailey still lived with a bit of survivor's guilt for having stepped on Executor Pallin in order to be handed the position he held today. The position came with a fancy title and a plush office, but he was little more than a Council babysitter. Handle the media, field questions, assign security details—basically wipe their important alien asses. Humbling. Still, it was his job.

Here and now, standing in a corridor one step away from hell with only a standard issue M-77 pistol at his side, that job and those alien asses were never more important. Armando Owen Bailey (damn his father for the first name) had been given one final mission. The Council had no hand in this one, however. Bailey had assigned it to himself.

The unearthly sound on the other side of the door scared him more than the sight of Cerberus troops on the C-Sec HQ landing pad. Yet, he went toward it anyway. On the ground before him lay a dead turian officer. Bailey pressed an open palm to the officer's forehead, both as a sign of respect and to ascertain whether he was still alive. The turian was ice cold. Bailey took his assault rifle. He prayed for the turian's safe passing into whatever afterlife they believed in, and that he hadn't used much of the ammo clips left in his rifle.

Locked and loaded, Bailey stepped to the door. It opened, revealing not one, not two, but a shitload of what he feared most—husks. He had viewed enough vids of Earth's invasion, seen a mass of husks traverse over city streets like a black cloud, watched what the strength of their claws and their teeth and their sheer numbers could do to a handful of humans, to know he had every right to be afraid. This was only the first wave. The Reapers were here, and ahead of schedule at that.

Husk heads snapped almost in unison at the sound of the opening door. One screeched, and the rest of them joined in loud enough to vibrate his eardrums. Bailey's heart hammered inside his chest, but he moved back into the corridor and took his stand. Pistol in one hand, rifle in the other, he let the freaks come at him one at a time, keeping himself out of reach. This move had worked wonders at the Armax Arena. His high scores against simulated husks weren't for nothing. The younger C-Sec recruits had taken to calling him The Terminator, and Bailey had to admit he liked the title, but there was one downside. This was no a simulation.

It was do or die time, and Bailey didn't have time to die.

He had a few precious moments wherein he took careful aim and managed to drop five of them with a clean headshot. The rest he mowed down with the dead turian's rifle. Good thing real husks lacked the armor he always added in simulation.

Back up the corridor, trying not to step on bodies while planting a bullet into the husks that still tried to move. He had no time to play with monsters. That would be the unfortunate job of the rest of C-Sec. He had a mission to complete.

Bailey stepped out into the C-Sec "Welcome Center." A political term. It was really a waiting room where the family of prisoners came to see their loved ones, but 'waiting room' wasn't even the correct term anymore. The place had turned into a morgue. Bodies littered the floor—civilians and officers alike. Bailey tried not to look at them. He hopped over the command desk, careful not to slice himself upon broken glass. God only knew what had happened here, or how quickly the attack had come. For now, the room was empty, save for himself and the dead.

He had been in his personal quarters packing a light travel bag and reading the details of T'Loak's arrest when the Citadel came to a bone breaking stop. (It felt like someone had slammed on the breaks of a skycar before accelerating again. Bailey had found himself on the floor, staring up at the bureau towering over him and praying it wouldn't teeter over.) In the moments before the screaming and the gunfire began, he had been frowning at the news and thinking what idiots the members of the council were for letting Aria T'Loak slip through their fingers. She was their last hope of passage to a heavily fortified location, and in their desperation, they attempted to hold that woman down with an iron claw. Bailey could have told them what a shitty idea that was if they ever bothered to seek his council on a matter. Trying to control Aria T'Loak was in some ways worse than what the galaxy was attempting to do—stop the Reapers.

On the other side of the "welcome" desk, Bailey keyed a few commands into a working computer terminal. Despite the dim lights and the eardrum-shattering klaxons, they still had power. While it continued to thrum throughout the Citadel, he would make use of it. He was looking for someone, and there she was. A hop, skip and a jump away in a holding cell.

An incalculable amount of time had passed since the attack began. The Reapers' little buddies had already overwhelmed C-Sec and taken out most of its defenses. If he found her, Aria was likely to be…

Nah! Not Aria T'Loak. That mad woman was an asari Reaper equivalent on two legs. Any reaper-creeper that tried to corner her would wish it had retired from Reaper service to sit on the beach and drink a couple of mai-tais than take on the Pirate Queen of the galaxy.

Were it not for the dead surrounding him, Bailey would have chuckled at the thought. He wasn't particularly superstitious or even religious, but to laugh surrounded by the dead might upset wherever they were going. He hoped it was to a better place than this one.

Holding his sorrow in check, Bailey headed for the door behind him leading into the deeper bowels of HQ. He was alone for now, but based on the gunfire farther in, he wouldn't be for long. Sighing at the sight of more dead on the other side of the door, he prayed to a deity he didn't know for strength. If Reaper ground troops had made it this far into HQ, who knows how long it would take them to overwhelm the rest of the Citadel. This was going to be an even tougher road than the one he'd inadvertently taken to head C-Sec, tougher than the Cerberus coup, tougher than anything he'd faced in simulation. High scores be damned.

 **EEE**

 ** _E_** ssentially, mass effect fields are created by element zero and an electrical current of dark energy. The two work together in order to either increase or decrease mass, enable FTL travel, or are used in manufacturing construction materials. Through natural genetics and years of intense training, Aria herself was capable of generating mass effect fields. The fields can be as strong as iron or as light as a feather, depending on how you chose to use them. They are extremely versatile.

But, even a versatile mass effect field has its weakness. They are not insusceptible to damage, especially damage over time. Aria's current mass effect cell was holding, but it was also weakening with every blow. The creature, a mutated concoction of reaper-tech and organics, used its body and a biotic weapon fused into its right arm to relentlessly pound away at the field. It looked like something right out of a horror vid, with its half-dissected appearance—metallic tubes running from what looked like a mouth down into its belly, a bulbous blue sack running from the top of its head down to its back with three intersecting spire-like carapaces, a sort of sick ornamentation. Hard to believe anything that had once been human or salarian could be turned into _that._ Adjutants were incredibly strong, and could leap inconceivable distances. They were unlike any species she had ever known. Nyreen had been right to fear them. She had known what horrific damage they were capable of in packs. It's why, surrounded by them as Nyreen had been on Omega, she had chosen to sacrifice herself in order to destroy the last of them. What would Nyreen think now if she could see Aria huddled in this little cocoon of a mass effect cell, an adjutant on the other side, desperate to get at her?

Thankfully, Nyreen wasn't speaking in Aria's mind right now. She had returned to her place among the dead, and there Aria intended to keep her. She was far more intent upon putting the final pieces of her tool together. She had found the last ones hidden in the far corner underneath the cot. The damn thing was hitting the mass effect field with more force than she had thought it capable of, but that didn't matter now. The tool needed only two more pieces to make it work.

Closing her mind to the adjutant's raspy wails, she concentrated upon popping the last two pieces from her suit, carefully placing them onto either end of the device. It lit up orange for a brief second, illuminating the smile on her face. With the press of a button, the omni-cuffs were a thing of the past.

Clipping the device to her belt, Aria rose to her full height and faced her opponent. The adjutant wasn't the only one glowing a cool blue, and the thing knew it. It wailed indignantly at her as though offended at her lack of fear. How dare she show her power in its presence? How dare she do anything but cower in fear? Aria was not afraid. She had faced them before and she would face hundreds more before she'd submit to Reaper control. The adjutant backed away from the field and took a fighter's stance. The showdown was about to begin.

This thing was about as intelligent as a LOKI Mech, but with the brawn of a YMIR. It beat and beat upon the mass effect field, hoping to weaken it with force. Aria laughed aloud. The damn thing was too busy breaking down the front door when the windows were wide open.

With a show of force practical to her plan, Aria used her biotics to toss the cot against her cell. The foot of the bed now on the floor, it leaned against the mass effect field like a ladder, and Aria used it as such. She climbed the sturdy alloyed "rungs", which gave the comfy C-Sec mattress its firmness, until she'd reached the spot where the mass effect field met the ceiling.

In time, her dim witted adjutant friend might have weakened the field enough to smash it down, but the thing wasn't smart enough to invest a bit of time in looking for the field's imperfections, the spot where it was already weak—the seams. The cell's mass effect field rounded from one end to the other, meeting the wall in a half circle, but the field on the ceiling (which prevented her from escaping through the duct work above) operated separately from the one which caged her in. With the right amount of biotic force…

Aria froze mid-reach. The mass effect field vanished unaided, and the head of the cot settled directly against the cell. It was a spacial difference of about one inch, but Aria felt it like a deathblow. She was vulnerable, unprepared and outgunned.

The next deathblow came after the adjutant's triumphant scream. One biotic punch to the midsection, and the cot flew across the room. It and her own personal shields were all that protected her from being crushed to death against the back wall. Seconds passed like minutes. Dazed, Aria couldn't remember where she was or what was happening. Memory came back into a fuzzy focus with the pelting of what felt like glass on her head and arms, cutting, stinging. With effort, she clawed her way back to full consciousness only to become alert to the pounding feat of the adjutant, its heavy, labored breathing, and the splat of dripping saliva.

Her chance of getting out of this in one piece had slimmed. At such close range, she had little means of defending herself, but Aria wasn't one to give up. Gripping the sides of the cot, she twisted away from the approaching adjutant, keeping the cot between them. She was no more prepared for the next disorienting blow than the first. It smashed her against the cell wall, further weakening her shields and her body. She never felt her legs give way. The next thing Aria knew, she was on the floor and the cot was crashing down upon her.

Through a tattered and singed hole in the mattress appeared the face of the adjutant. Had she a pistol, Aria would have shoved it through the hole and given the adjutant a gift it couldn't refuse. Other than her biotics, however, she was defenseless. She pushed a pathetic-by-Aria's-standards biotic bolt through the opening, and the adjutant stumbled backward, but it wouldn't keep it at bay for long. Weak, disoriented from the adjutant's last strike, she had little left to give.

Despite their lack of basic intelligence, adjutant's were lethal hunters and in many ways were more determined to get at their prey than an asari ruler who had lost her throne in a well-planned coup. Aria had seen firsthand what adjutants were capable of and it wasn't anything pretty to witness. The beasts not only finished off their prey in as brutal and bloody a manner possible, they also infected them, effectively turning them from one form to another. Anyone killed by an adjutant, became an adjutant. It was an ugly procreative process.

And it _was not_ going to happen to her, even if she had to do the work of the adjutant herself.

 _POP! POP!_

Aria didn't pray, not to any goddess or other deity, but that sound was like the answer to one. A reprieve came through her little viewing hole. This was not her death, or even the bliss of unconsciousness. It was the sound of gunfire drawing the adjutant's attention away from its asari prey. It stumbled and screamed in protest, pulling away from view. She caught sight of its putrid, four-toed feet from beneath the cot, retreating from her and toward another. It gave her the seconds she needed to regain her strength.

Though grateful, Aria couldn't help but wonder who was stupid enough to think they could best an adjutant with nothing but a rifle? A memory of Shepard deep in the bowels of Omega's eezo processing plant, assault rifle and sheer brute force taking one of the adjutants down, came to her mind. Aria's heart raced for an uncomfortable moment before she came to her senses. Shepard wasn't so stupid as to come to her rescue when the whole galaxy needed saving. Time to take matters into her own hand and rescue the idiot who thought he could rescue her. Whoever it was, they were already struggling.

Aria tossed the cot, used her quickly strengthening biotics to tear a metal leg from its base and sent the jagged edge racing toward the adjutant's bulging blue backside. It wailed in surprised.

"Shoot the sack on its head!" she screamed to her supposed savior while ripping free another leg from the cot.

Two well-placed shots and the back of its head exploded, projecting blue goo everywhere. The final jagged cot leg brought the adjutant to its knees and eventually to the floor where it stuttered, shuddered and went still.

Red lights continued to flash intermittently, but the light was sufficient to recognize the haggard man standing in the doorway. Instead of a supposed hero, Aria saw a traitor. She flew across the room, pinning Commander Bailey against the wall with both biotics and pure rage.

"You backstabbing son of a bitch!"

"Hold on, now, I just saved your damn life!"

"By shutting off the mass effect field? By trying to get me killed?"

Aria ripped the sidearm from his person and jammed the muzzle between his eyes, banging the back of his head against the wall hard enough to make him see stars. She didn't care that there was a rifle in his other hand. He wasn't going to shoot. He had come into Hell's den to find her. She had to know what his reason was.

"Maybe I'll put a hole in your head as a thank you."

The consternation dropped from his face like a stone. Bailey knew a bluff when confronted with one. "Whatever you're thinking right now, it isn't true."

"Enlighten me."

"You think I gave the word to stop you and your men at the dock. That wasn't my call."

"Bullshit!"

"No," Bailey said and slapped the gun away from his forehead. "It's not. You think being head of C-Sec means something? I'm a glorified nursemaid! The Council made that decision. I was just the one sent to deliver the damn message. I didn't find out about your ambush and arrest until after the fact."

Aria sneered in response. "I find that hard to believe."

Bailey sneered back. "And I find it hard to believe that I stepped over the bodies of my own men to secure the safe passage of a ruthless asari mercenary who doesn't give a shit about anybody but herself."

"Why?" Aria stepped back, taken aback by the commander's words.

An unearthly cry issued from somewhere within C-Sec HQ. Bailey paused long enough to gauge its distance. "Because we've just run out of time. If we were still waiting for the Reaper's advance, I'd let you rot in here, but as things stand now, I need your help."

"If it involves helping the council, you're on your own."

Bailey stepped toward her. "It involves helping the council help you, dammit. For now, we still have a window of time to get off this tomb, and your ship gives us the best advantage. You have the experience here. You know what it takes to fight your way through unbeatable odds, and from what I understand, you also once shared a close friendship with one of the councilors."

"That's none of your damn business."

The unearthly cry sounded again.

"Whatever," Bailey said, removed something from his pocket and slapped it on the shoulder of her jacket. "None of that matters anymore."

Aria cringed at the C-Sec emblem. "What the hell is this?"

"You're an honorary member of C-Sec now, and I'm putting you in charge. Get us to the council and get us the hell outta here." Bailey spied something over Aria's shoulder while she tried to wrap her head around this uncertain turn of events. It was the holding cell's small armory. He muttered, "Thank God," and went to gather extra ammo as well as a few more weapons. He handed Aria a shotgun, an M-22 Eviscerator by the look of it. "Any questions?"

"Yes—"

A sound from behind cut short her answer, and she turned to see one lone husk standing in the doorway. It ran mindlessly toward them. Aria cocked the shotgun, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The husk came to within handshaking distance before the force of the projectile sent it rocketing back out the door and into the wall. There it slid to the floor, leaving a dripping trail of putrescence behind.

Aria turned back to Bailey, who stared at her mouth agape. "How do we get to Cellblock D?"

For a second or two, Bailey didn't know what a cellblock was. "Uh, we head back out that way and take a—Wait! Are you insane?"

"I'm not going anywhere without my men."

"We can't go further in. We need to get _out_ of headquarters and to the embassies. They're safer where they are for now."

"My men, or the deal is off and I make my way out of here without the council."

"We don't have time for this! If we don't get moving now, we lose our window."

"Test my resolve, _please_ ," Aria said without raising her voice one octave.

Bailey sighed heavily. "Shit." He put a round in the chamber and headed for the door. "This way."

 **EEE**

 ** _T_** he aptly named M-22 Eviscerator did exactly what it was meant to do, eviscerate. It wasn't a pleasant sight to witness the disemboweling of a husk or a cannibal's entrails onto clean prison floors, but better them than himself. And though he hated to admit it, Aria too. He needed her. He wasn't getting the council off the station without her. Her expertise in getting into and out of impossible situations would save them all.

His M-8 Avenger assault rifle packed a pretty mean punch, as well. It couldn't disembowel, but it sure could put any Reaper abomination down in one second flat when in the hands of someone who knew how to use it. And Bailey knew how to use it. Husk after husk went down. One shot between the eyes. Sometimes he had to go automatic when they came at him in groups, but those moments were few and far between.

For the most part, their trek through C-Sec underground was uneventful. Small pockets of insurgents met them along the way, those dumb enough to get separated from the main cell. Though, Aria had a different idea: "Not separated, deployed." Bailey tried not to ponder on what her words meant—that the reapers weren't just here to take control of the Citadel and destroy their system of government, but to snuff out each and every life upon the station; from the greatest of them down to the smallest and least valuable.

He knew he was late, and far behind in the Reaper's advancement throughout the Citadel, but he had to find some way to warn people, to give them control amidst the chaos.

Aria blew the distorted face of a batarian away from its cannibalistic head when the lift doors opened. It had been standing there as though it were waiting for them. Had it retained enough batarian intellect to know the descending numbers meant someone was about to depart the lift? Who knew. Bailey and Aria hadn't the luxury of contemplating such things.

The lift doors had opened onto a small processing area, where prisoners were assigned their cells and given grey regulation outfits to wear. Bailey hated the color. The outfits went surprisingly well with most species, particularly turian, but they looked like death on humans. Good thing the most dangerous prisoners didn't stay here long. They were shipped off to high security stations that didn't house civilized people with families.

"Where to now?" Aria asked.

Bailey heard a tinge of urgency in her tone. Good. It meant they would move quickly.

After giving the processing area a look over and spying nothing lurking behind counters or chairs, he exited the lift. "This way."

He took Aria past a row of chairs and a waiting communication terminal, where prisoners could make one last call to family or loved ones before the cell doors swung shut. Another door awaited them on the other side. Bailey had access to every section of C-Sec, and the cellblocks were no different. The doors were automatically set to register his omni-signature. They slid open practically at command.

Down a short, quiet corridor that featured the warden's office and a maintenance room, they came to another door. It led to Cellblock A. The door opened at their approach.

Bailey came to a frozen standstill at the threshold, slack jawed and suddenly weary. Aria pushed past him and he lost his balance for a second or two until the doorframe caught him. In his tenure at C-Sec, he had seen a lot of things: heists worth millions of credits, standoffs with psychopaths holding hostages, murders most gruesome, even serial killings. In this day and age, people were as selfish and evil as they were hundreds of years ago, but…

"Holy shit," Bailey whispered.

He had never seen carnage on a level like this.

Every cell door had been pried open. For some, the carnage remained within the cell, but most were not kept so confined. Most of the prisoners, unarmed and probably pleading to their heartless captors for their lives, had been dragged from their cells and slaughtered _en masse_ at the center of the block. Shredded bodies lay like heaps of rubbish, their collective blood a ruddy pool beneath them.

Bailey could barely catch his breath enough to speak. "If those bastards have already advanced this far into C-Sec, God knows what's happening out there on the Presidium, or hell, _on the Wards._ We're probably already too late for the council."

Aria grabbed his lapel and shoved him farther into the doorjamb than he already was. "Don't talk like we're done. We're not done. You think this is bad? I saw worse on Omega. Now get over it and get me to Cellblock D!"

For minute there, Bailey actually thought she was trying to bolster him into action. But no. "Now I know you're insane. This happened maybe an hour ago. The bastards're probably working block D over right now. Your guys are dead, T'Loak."

"Bullshit. You don't know that. Every single one of them has faced Reaper forces. They know how to deal with them."

"Without weapons? Did they ever face them without a gun in their hands?"

Aria's face dropped.

"They're prisoners, T'Loak. Just like these guys. And there are no weapons on the cellblocks. Trust me, they're dead."

She let go of him and stepped back. Bailey watched her as the truth sank in. Defeat hung upon her like a thundercloud. Her entire body seemed to sink into the floor even though she maintained her footing steps away from a conglomerate puddle of blood.

"I don't get it," Bailey said, honestly baffled by what looked like grief. "Those guys amounted to lackeys, henchmen. You'd have shot'em between the eyes if they ever crossed you. Why do you care?"

"Because they're _my_ men, Commander." Aria had leaned against the wall, the back of her blue tentacled-head resting against its cool surface. She now turned to look at him, her sorrow profound, and yet within it laid an ice-cold rage. " _ **If**_ they had ever crossed me, I would have killed them without a second thought, but at least they would have died my way. Not like…" She nodded toward the horrific pile of bodies. _"…that."_

Bailey tore his eyes away from the carnage at his feet. He shrugged his shoulders. What else could he do? "They're dead. We're alive."

Eyes on the carnage, Aria's smile was curt. "Surprisingly cynical."

"When I have to be, but the fact remains, the council won't be alive for much longer if we don't—"

In the silence of the tomb of Cell Block A came an unwelcome sound. A grunt, the scraping of metal upon metal somewhere within the block. Bailey was on point the moment the sound reached his ears, and it was a welcome sight to see. Despite her loss, T'Loak had not lost her edge either. With a nod to each other, Bailey took one side of the pile and Aria took the other. They advanced forward, past the ripped hinges of cell doors on the first level of block A.

Nothing moved within the pile. All were dead there. No adjutant descendants. No husk reanimations. No, the sound was coming from the other end of the block, where the lift Bailey would have used to take T'Loak down to block D stood. A helpful light above illuminated a gap at the bottom of the lift doors and four fingers wiggling through, seeking purchase. But that light was dim, making it nearly impossible to identify them as friend or foe. Aria wasn't willing to take the chance on a foe. She shot a warning round near the opening, enough to shock, perhaps even temporarily disorient.

A thick, guttural cry issued from within. A cry they expected to hear. But they didn't expect the cry to come back with a curse. "Shit! Don't shoot!"

 **EEE**

 ** _T_** here were few times in her life that Aria could remember feeling elated. Most of her life she lived from moment to moment, and the only thing that held any real meaning was getting to the top. It didn't matter what—the top of her class, the top ranking commando in her troop, the top dancer at Afterlife, hell, the top of the food chain if life called for it—as long as she was at the top. Life for Aria T'Loak wasn't about being happy, or having a good time, or making friends. She didn't share meaningful, lifelong connections. They had always been short-lived, and if those connections lasted a length of time longer than what was normal, she found a way to end it. One cannot remain at the top in a "meaningful" relationship. A relationship, even an endearing friendship, turned two people into one, and that was something Aria didn't allow.

Thus, she couldn't comprehend this feeling of elation, of happiness at the sound of another's voice. The scent of death was all around them. It might, in the hours to come, turn out to be her own. This sensation registered as insanity in her mind. So why did she feel compelled to follow it?

"Don't shoot," came the voice within the elevator shaft. "I'm unarmed!"

Stupid mistakes come a dime a dozen. Aria had her share. Like now, dropping her weapon and getting down on her knees to pry open the lift doors. But she didn't care.

"Bray?" she called into the shaft.

The voice inside gasped in surprise. "Aria? That you?"

She dug her fingers into the gap and pulled, imbuing her actions with a bit of biotic power. Commander Bailey added his own weight to the task, helping her pull the doors apart to help Bray through the opening. When the light caught his ugly batarian mug, Aria stuck her hand through the gap and gave Bray her arm. He took it like a lifeline while Bailey braced the doors with his own body.

She pulled the batarian through and onto the floor beside her. He wasn't in the best shape, but he was alive. Aria heaved a sigh and shook her head to try and clear it. It was weird, this sensation; like walking on sunshine while simultaneously stepping in shit.

"Bray, you son of a bitch, how are you still alive?"

He coughed. "Good question."

"What's it like down there?" Bailey asked, squatting beside him.

Bray's four black eyes stared at the ceiling for some time before he spoke. "I—I can't—hard to describe. You humans call it Hell. We batarians have another name for it, but…it was worse than that."

"Is there anyone else alive down there?"

"What about the rest of the men, Bray?"

How could Aria have thought Bray incapable of expressing emotion? She watched him close his eyes and hide the horror on his face with both hands. "So much death," he whispered. "That damn preacher on Omega was right. The end is here."

He needn't say more. Aria sat back and eyed her weapon on the floor. As elated as she had been to see him again, she found herself on the verge of hating him. Hating the hopelessness in his words. Hating the sight of him beaten. He shouldn't have allowed the massacre to affect him. Bray was stronger than that. Instinct told her to take her weapon, put the muzzle to Bray's temple and pull the trigger. She picked the gun up, but couldn't make herself bring it to his head. When she looked up, she found Bailey staring at her, hand at his side, braced to grab hold of his side arm if he needed it. Aria gave him a knowing smile, but there was no mirth in it.

Instead of blowing his brains out, Aria got to her feet and forced Bray to his. "Get up, you coward," she demanded of him, pulling at his arm. "You're a damn batarian. Half the galaxy thinks you're a cutthroat and a murderer. Act like one, not a sniveling salarian."

She pulled him to a standing position and twisted him around so he would see the death waiting behind him. Bray cringed and turned his head.

Aria would have none of it. "No," she growled, forcing him to look. "Look! And use all four of your eyes."

Bray fought, but Aria was stronger. She used a light stasis field to hold him still. In his weakened state, a strong one would have killed him.

"Look at them, Bray."

"Aria, please, no," he begged, his voice breaking.

Out of the corner of her eye, Aria watched Bailey, making sure he didn't attempt to intervene in her correction of Bray. Though his hand hovered near his pistol, ready to make a move if he had to, he stayed back, out of their space.

"Look, and look hard, Bray, because that could be everyone on Omega one day…including your family. Your wife, your son."

"No."

"That's what will happen if we do not get off this rock, and get back home."

Determination hardened the horror and the fear that had distorted Bray's features. He wasn't where he needed to be, not by half. His hands still shook, and if batarians could cry, tears might still cloud his vision, but he was better.

Bailey sighed heavily behind them and unholstered his pistol. "We'll probably see worse than this when we get out to the Presidium anyway. We still have a job to do." He handed Bray the weapon. "Come on. Let's get to the armory and get you suited up. You won't last five seconds out there in prison regs."

Having the weapon in his hands seemed to bolster Bray. His shoulders straightened, and with a sigh, the fear slid off him like drops of rain. He nodded. "Right, let's go."

Aria gave Bray one hard look before following Bailey back out of Cellblock A. The last time she saw him, he was a rock, fierce and loyal. Now, she feared his mental state and what it might cause him to do to hinder their forward progress. If Cellblock D looked anything like A, how the hell did he survive?

 **EEE**

 ** _I_** n the armory, the three of them geared up. There was enough firepower here for the three of them to hold off an entire brigade for a day, at least. They took only what they needed, though. Weapons, explosives, ammo caches. Enough to plow a route to the council and then to her waiting ship.

Bailey had tossed Bray black armor, striped in blue. C-Sec armor. Having severed themselves from the Citadel Council and its system of government many years ago, batarians hadn't been granted any rank among Citadel Security. Thus, there was no need for armor designed specifically for their race. Bailey had handed Bray the closest thing to batarian armor he could find, a suit designed for humans.

Bray frowned. "This all you got?"

"Feel lucky you got that," Bailey said, sliding on his own armor.

"Where's the stuff you bastards took from me when you locked me up?"

The strength had come back into his voice, which Aria was grateful for. His strength was the extra backing they would need to see them through what was coming.

Bailey strapped several explosives to his chest armor and tossed a rifle to the holster on his back. "Your stuff is under lock and key on the opposite side of lockup. It would take a good ten minutes to go searching for it, considering the riffraff we'd prpobably encounter along the way. We don't have that kind of time."

Bray shrugged and slid the armor over his head.

"Sorry T'Loak," Bailey said, looking her over. "Not gonna find armor for women here." He caught the raising of her eyebrow. "Not that we don't have women in C-Sec; just most of'em work in Customs and Immigration."

Aria lowered her eyebrow and smirked instead. "Yes, I know several of them by name. Don't worry, Commander." A surge of biotic electricity struck the air and an aura surrounded Aria that glowed an ethereal blue. "I have all the armor I need."

"Good to hear, _Commander_ ," Bray said, pointing out the C-Sec insignia on her white jacket.

Aria grinned despite the cruel joke, inspired to see the Bray she had known less than an hour ago return. It was nice to see that he fit snuggly into his new armor. Batarians were wider in the upper body than most humans. It was a bit tight, but Bailey had chosen the size well.

"You two gear up," Bailey rested an assault rifle upon his shoulder and said. "Take as much as you can carry. I'll be back in less than sixty seconds."

"Where are you going?" Suspicion laced Bray's tone. Aria didn't blame him.

"There's something I need to do." And with that, the C-Sec commander left the armory.

"What do you think that's all about?"

Aria shrugged. She had an idea, but… "Who knows. It's not important. Gear up."

"Yes, ma'am."

Piece by piece, they loaded themselves down with rifles, pistols, shotguns. Anything good for up close and personal fighting. Explosives would work well for taking out hosts of husks, and her biotics would back them up once those were expended.

They were nearly done—a handful of grenades, strapped to belts they could wear around their waist or over their shoulder for good measure—when Bray set his rifle down and leaned over the table. His knuckles could have dug a groove into the fabricated alloy had he pressed any harder.

"Aria," he said, his voice sounding as heavy as the weight of his shoulders.

She knew what he wanted to say. "Leave it, Bray. There are other battles to face."

"But…you have no idea what I did to survive in there. Their screams—I—I can't get them out of my head."

She faced him, pushed him back against the wall. "And I don't want to know. You think I don't hear the screams of the people of Omega in my head every time I lay my head down at night? You did what you had to. Learn to deal with it! At least those weren't the screams of your son."

Bray nodded. It was clear the guilt of whatever he did to live still screamed within him. He was barely holding his anguish in check for her sake. She didn't like the sight of it. It carved an uncomfortable fear in her gut.

A shuffle of feet sounded behind her, and Aria turned to see the grim-set face of Bailey.

"We're going to be dealing with a lot more in the next few minutes." He pointed to a vid screen right outside the armory.

Aria and Bray crowded into the doorframe. On the vid, the very reporter who had caught her on camera being escorted from the embassy in omni-cuffs, Khalisah al-Jilani, was reporting from a catwalk over the Sunset Strip, covering the ransacking of the Silversun Casino. People were running like mad, some looting shops, some looking for a safe place to lay low. Gunfire retorts rang over the sound of the reporter's voice. A C-Sec officer had just gunned down a salarian with an armload of credit chits.

Bray growled. "Don't these idiots know we're under attack?"

"Just wait," Bailey said, his voice hushed. "They've been playing this over and over."

Just as he spoke his last word, the sound of gunfire escalated. Screams of panic rang out as loudly. The camera zoomed, filling its image of people running away from the skyway end of the Strip. Another looter, his arms loaded down with Armax Arsenal brand sports shoes, stopped in his effort to flee from C-Sec officers. The camera caught the widening of his eyes, the dropping of his jaw before it panned to catch a husk running his way.

Husks were almost always in the first wave. They could move fast, like the first strike of arrows in a medieval battle. The looter was too ignorant to know what to do, and he decided too late to drop his prizes and run. The husk overtook him, dropped him to the ground and went to work on him. The camera caught a spray of blood before it turned away.

"Oh my God," al-Jilani could be heard saying as the camera zoomed in on the skyway. Explosions revealed the Reapers first wave: cannibals, husks, marauders, ravagers. As the gunfire escalated, so did the screams. People ran past Ryushi's, the famous sushi restaurant made famous by Shepard, and now made infamous by the blood being spilled within it.

Whole sections of the Silversun Strip were going up in flames, and C-Sec officers were running away with the looters in an effort to escape the approaching insurgents. Many of them were brought down with bullets or obliterated by explosions. The camera panned back to Al-Jilani, who was giving a terrified play-by-play of the events happening below her when a sound and movement caught her attention. The camera panned again. Upon her relatively safe parapet, a door had opened from the upper entrance to the Castle Arcade. One lone marauder stepped out. The typical cold and calculating voice of the reporter turned into the scream of the damned. The pop of the marauder's rifle silenced her. Red dollops sprinkled upon the camera's lens. The last image the camera showed was the loan marauder taking aim for a second time, and then the screen went to static.

By the time it was over, the three of them were seething. Bailey, because this was his home. Bray, who was also breathing heavily, because he had just relived his own hell. And Aria, because all she saw was the destruction of Omega.

"We need to move," Bailey finally said. "We've got a council to save."

Aria loaded her empty shotgun and pumped a round into the chamber. "And a lot of fuckers to take down along the way. Let's go."

* * *

 **Hopefully, I did a good job here. Reading over this myself, I don't feel as proud of it as I was when I first wrote it, but that's the way of the writer, I guess. I'm always overly critical of my own work. What did you think? I haven't heard from my constant readers. Would love to know what you think of the story.**

 **PS: The name _Nazalus_ came from me. I was unable to locate any reference work that mentioned the name of the turian who controlled Afterlife before Aria.**


	7. Number ONE Fan

**This is a short one in comparison to all the others, and features a character I hadn't intended to write about, but I felt inspired. Hope you like it.**

* * *

 **MASS EFFECT: ONE**

* * *

"The measure of an individual can be difficult to discern by actions alone."

~Thane Krios~

* * *

 **#ONE FAN**

 **Zakera Ward – Before Endgame**

 ** _B_** lood everywhere.

Skylar had never seen so much blood before, and in so many different colors. Red and green and blue and purple, almost like the colors of the rainbow Miss T'nashi had them draw in class the other day. Only these colors were darker, uglier. Skylar liked Miss T'nashi. She had eyes of the deepest green, and the most beautiful blue skin. She wore several rose-gold rings that stood out in spectacular contrast to her blue fingers. Skylar sometimes wished she could be a beautiful asari like her teacher who wore pretty gold rings, but mommy always said beauty comes from inside.

Skylar wasn't so sure. The stuff coming from inside the dead bodies on the floor wasn't so beautiful. Some of them were asari like her teacher, their eyes open and sightless. They had lost their beauty in death.

Miss T'nashi had made a habit of warning them of the dangers that existed outside the safety of home and school. There were bad people who wouldn't think twice about hurting little kids. Mommy never said much about that, except to say, "Don't talk to strangers" or to warn her away from certain areas of the Wards. Miss T'nashi knew better. Mommy was wrong about a lot of things. She said there were no monsters in the galaxy besides the one in books and fairytales…but there are…

One was chasing them.

Her big brother once read a scary story to her, of a monster who ate little kids for breakfast. Bellamy thought the scary story was funny, but Skylar didn't know if he would think it funny now. When the attack started, he had been in class. Mommy tried to get to him, but the monsters came. Now they were running through the same dark streets Mommy had warned her about, and the monster behind them was getting closer. Her chin bobbing on Mommy's shoulder, Skylar stared terror-stricken at the strange looking monster. It was a man, but it wasn't a man. It looked like a robot, but a robot with wild, shining eyes and a lipless mouth that hissed like an animal. It wanted to kill them. It was reaching out its hand. It was going to grab Mommy. It was going to trample them to the floor and rip them to pieces like the monsters that had attacked Miss T'nashi even as she tried to protect Skylar and her classmates.

Mommy always said there were no real monsters…

Its hand reached for her face, and Skylar screamed.

"Get out of the way!"

Mommy jerked left into a neon yellow shop window. There was a bang from behind and the monster's head exploded. Skylar watched it run a few more feet before it realized it no longer had a head. It collapsed knees first, then toppled to the floor spewing a black liquid from its nub of a neck.

"Oh my God!" Mommy cried, sinking against the window of a clothing store. Neon lights reflected like another rainbow through Mommy's tears. "Thank you! Thank you so much."

Skylar had twisted in Mommy's arms to see their would-be savior. A man with blonde hair stood before them with a big gun in his hands. He had a goatee like daddy used to wear before the last attack when the men with a dog name had tried to take over the Citadel. Mommy said Daddy died. The man seemed nice enough, though, for being on the wrong side of town. His hands shook, rattling the gun and its ammo cartridges within. He was as scared as she was.

"Are you guys alright? Are you hurt?"

"We're fine, but my son…"

"Where is he?"

"He was in school. I couldn't get to him before…"

The blonde-haired man looked away and nodded. He knew something. Skylar could tell. She had gotten good at sensing these things. It started during the last attack when daddy hugged her and told her how much he loved her. He knew then he wasn't coming back, but he went and fought anyway.

Skylar watched as the blonde-haired man shook the truth out of his expression and focused instead upon them. "Where were you headed? Home?"

"I—I don't—no. We live on the Upper Wards. I was just trying to get away."

Gunfire sounded south of them, and the man ushered them into the store. Lights flickered inside, threatening to go out.

"Uh, okay," the man said, scratching his head and thinking. "I can't leave you here. Um, maybe I could—no. Can't do that." He pounded the heel of his palm on his head as if that might make the thoughts come faster. "Think, stupid. Think like Shepard."

Just as the man's plan formulation was falling apart, one of the vid screens in the store sparked to life. A few flashes of light and another man's face appeared on screen. Skylar recognized him despite the blood, sweat, and grime dotting his face, but she couldn't have given anyone his name even if pressured. He came to class one day sometime before the first attack, maybe forever ago. Skylar couldn't remember. But he was important. She knew that. He was with C-Sec, a big man with C-Sec.

As he began speaking, it was like the whole of the Citadel went quiet. The screams of the dying silenced, and gunfire ceased. The C-Sec man's voice filled the airwaves:

"To the civilians of the Wards and the Presidium, to anyone who can see my face or hear my voice, this is Commander Bailey with Citadel Security. We have not given up on you. Your Council has not forgotten you. We are not going to sit still while these bastards destroy everything we've worked so hard to rebuild. We will fight until our last breath to hold this station intact.

"Those of you with families or without combat training, find shelter in your homes. Follow emergency procedures and get yourself to a safe place. We will protect you. But for anyone willing to take up arms and fight for the Citadel, for our right to exist in the galaxy, a weapon will not be withheld from you. I could care less if you're a duct rat, a petty thief, or a drug lord. We need you. And should you give your last to protect the weak, your sacrifice will never be forgotten.

"To all C-Sec officers, coordinate on my command and hold position. Do not let those bastards in. The time to take back the Citadel is now."

The blonde-haired man wasn't with C-Sec, but the commander's voice seemed to fill him up like the balloons Mommy filled with air for her birthday. His shoulders got bigger, his fingers gripped the gun like they knew their place upon its surface, and a smile brightened his features as though today was his birthday.

Not a good day to have a birthday.

Blondie turned to them with that confident smile despite the returned sound of gunfire. "Okay, I have an idea. It's a little risky, but I think we can do it."

"Okay," Mommy said. Nobody knew Mommy better than Skylar. Her "okay" was hardly an okay at all.

"There's a lift nearby. One level up is a C-Sec division. They can protect you, get you to safety."

"But?"

Mommy's "but" was no better than her "okay," and the look on the blonde-haired man's face confirmed it. His shoulders lost their air for a second or two, and he lost his grip on the gun.

"But…we've gotta go out into the open to get to it." His hands started to shake again, but only a little bit.

Mommy shook her head. She was scared; no, she was terrified. Skylar didn't like the look of fear in her Mommy's eyes. The last time she saw it, Daddy hadn't come home.

"No," she said. "We can't. Those things will come after us."

"And if you stay in here, they'll find you for sure. You and your kid will be Reaper lunch."

Skylar didn't like the idea any better than being chased by them. The very idea filled her head with Miss T'nashi's screams as the monster tore her apart. She was so beautiful. Her deep green eyes had turned black at the end. Skylar didn't want to see that ever again, but she couldn't get it out of her head. It was what Mommy called a brain stain, a bad thought that doesn't go away. Bad thoughts brought tears and Skylar didn't like anyone to see her cry. She buried her face in Mommy's shoulder.

"Oh no," the blonde-haired man said. "I'm sorry little girl. I didn't mean to scare you. What's your name?"

Mommy would answer for her. "She hasn't spoken a word since we lost her dad in the Cerberus attack. Her name is Skylar. Mine is Abby."

"Okay, Miss Abby. My name is Conrad, Conrad Verner, and I'm gonna get you two to safety. You hear that, Skylar?"

Skylar nodded while he patted her on the back. It was all she could do. She wasn't lifting her head for nothing right now. Not even for the high-pitched screech echoing off the walls. Something was near, and she didn't want to know what it was.

"Oh shit!" Mommy said and squeezed Skylar tight around the middle. "What is that?"

Mommy promised to never curse, but Mommy also said 'desperate times call for desperate measures.' Although, the last time she said that, Daddy had burnt supper.

"We need to go." The blonde-haired man—no, his name is Conrad—his voice dampened with a bit of distance. He must have gone ahead of them. "Stay behind me."

Mommy was on the move. Skylar wasn't ready to look out just yet. She only knew they were running again. Mommy's breath came heavy and shaky against her. Skylar could feel it rustling in her hair whenever Mommy would look over her shoulder.

"This way! Hurry!"

The screech came again. It was closer this time, just like the man that was a robot and yet was a monster.

"Oh God! Oh my God!"

Skylar hugged Mommy tight. Never in her life had she heard such terror in Mommy's voice, and after this day, she wished she never had to hear it again. The BOOM, BOOM of a gun sounded close by. Mr. Conrad's gun. He was firing at whatever was after them.

"Run! Run!" she heard Mr. Conrad scream, and Mommy came to a sudden stop. She had run into something. By the scrape to Skylar's knuckles wrapped tightly around Mommy's neck, it must have been a wall. But Mommy didn't stop. She hugged to the wall, but she kept moving. Gunfire exploded nearby unceasingly, and then a wail, so close and so ear-piercing it rent the air around them in two, turned Mommy's hot skin cold as ice beneath Skylar's fingers.

It had been a while since Skylar had anything to say; not since Daddy died, but the sound ripped a scream from her that could have rivaled the monster's itself. Had she and Mommy not been so close, neither would have heard the other scream. This was it. What happened to Miss T'nashi was about to happen to them. Her screams had been the same.

The whoosh of doors. A bright light. Mr. Conrad screaming, "Get in!"

Skylar took the chance. She had to look.

Opening her eyes, she saw they had entered the lift. Mr. Conrad had come through on his promise. They were almost to safety…

…but Mommy was still screaming. Her back was all the way against the opposite side of the lift, but she was still screaming. Outside was the reason why.

It was taller than anything she had ever seen. As tall as a krogan was big. Skylar knew the shape. Not like the man-robot-monster thing. This one had a woman's body and a skull face. Tentacles grew from its head as roots grew from trees. Mr. Conrad shot it, but it seemed to have no effect. It flitted from spot to spot in a bolt of blue light and yet its legs never moved any faster than a step a second. He couldn't keep up with its rapid movement. It was getting closer and its screeches had become deafening.

"Come with us!" Mommy screamed at Mr. Conrad, but what he did would baffle the both of them for a long time to come. He halted his defense to reach one arm into the lift and press the button that would close the door. His arm snaked back out just in time.

Mommy would tell her later, the last thing she heard as the doors closed was Mr. Conrad's scream. She called it a fearful scream, but in the same breath, she also called it a war cry. Skylar couldn't remember that. What she remembered was her last glimpse of the tall monster woman. She remembered thinking that the thing was not only a monster, but a thief, too. It had stolen Miss T'nashi's beautiful rose-gold rings.

* * *

 **Had to give an ode to one of my favorite movies of all times in this chapter. _ALIENS._**


	8. Two Two ONE

**MASS EFFECT: ONE**

* * *

 _"Advantage of being a salarian … Never see me coming."_

~Mordin Solus~

* * *

 **Two Two ONE**

 _ **Codex Entry**_ : A mixed-species team of special-operations soldiers have volunteered to covertly deliver Leviathan artifacts behind enemy lines. Their aim is to make Reaper creatures thralls of the Leviathans. On a small scale, this mission could cause chaos and disruption. On a large scale, and if given enough time, it could form an army of Reaper creatures dedicated to exterminating their own kind. The team's major limiting factors are the small number of artifacts at their disposal and the reluctance of Alliance commanders to operate openly with such a potent weapon, for fear the Reapers might develop a countermeasure.

 **Earth, London**

 **Before Endgame**

 ** _D_** efine "scared."

You can probably come up with all kinds of one-word definitions: frightened, fearful, startled, nervous, panicky, petrified. Shit, you could go on and on. But how do you describe it, delineate it, break it down, give the kind of meaning to it so that when you tell someone, "Hey, I'm scared," they know exactly what you mean.

The only way would be to count off all the things it makes you feel. The cold, coppery taste in the back of your throat, the sweat on your upper lip, on your palms, that cold skin, queasy gut sort of feeling. But fear can come in different shapes and sizes. There's the uneasy fear you get when you've been robbed; the nervous fear when you've lost something important, like money or a family pet, or hell, a kid; the raw fear of death when it looks you in the eye and you have no choice but to look back; and there's another kind, one that grabs you by the gut with rotten fingers and squeezes.

This fear, this level of scared, is a little like staring Death in the eye, but without the promise of a swift end. You stare back and Death doesn't even make a move. He stays back, hiding in the shadows, so to speak, but he watches. He's always watching, waiting. He'll come for you one day, but for now, he's just biding his time, watching you hurt, watching you scream, watching you cry. For that, you hate him. You don't fear him. Hell no! Fear is the four walls that surround you. Fear is the one-way mirror that lets you see out but never lets anyone see in. Fear is the hatred you feel for everyone on the other side of that window who had the world and didn't even know it. Fear is knowing that when you do leave those four walls behind, all that awaits you is pain and drugs and killing and more pain.

So yeah, you don't fear Death. The son of a bitch is nothing but a coward in a scary outfit. Dare him all you like, he'll just hide back there in the shadows like a ghost with no place to haunt. What you fear is that life will just go on and on, pain on top of pain, with no end. That's real fear. That's the real definition of 'scared.' And there's no real way to define that sort of fear. You just feel it, you live with it until it becomes an everyday part of life. The only thing you can do is beat it into submission and keep going. And when the going gets tough, you fight.

That's what happened at the Teltin Facility on Pragia. Jack had come to understand that over the last couple of years. That fear you can't explain had taken hold. You can't explain it because you can't remember it. It blanks your mind kind of like that one-way mirror—it can look out but you can't see in. Fear mixed with a heavy dose of rage can make you do things you won't remember and wouldn't want to be told about later.

Jack could not remember much of what happened in her escape from the Teltin Facility, and what little she did her mind had skewed. The images were like snapshots: angry faces, terrified faces, flying bodies, blue explosions. But there was one that, no matter how hard she tried to blur it out with time, it would not go away. It seemed as if she saw it from the moment of her escape. Through walls, through bodies, it beckoned her. The image of a shuttle marked with a Cerberus insignia. The image of freedom. She had been just a child. She hadn't known a damn thing about how to pilot a shuttle. Jack could hardly remember getting it off the ground, but she had, and she had been free…for a while.

Things had changed a lot since then. She wasn't that scared little girl anymore, afraid that death would never come for her. But that didn't mean she hadn't seen the shuttle from time to time, or felt that sensation of freedom begging to be answered. She was feeling it pretty strongly right about now. And death was still there. Still waiting. Still watching. She thought she saw him sometimes, peeking out from the rubble or in the eyes of one of the Reapers' children. Death would have to wait, and so would freedom. Jack had a mission to accomplish, and nothing was going to keep her from it.

The Reapers had no idea who they were messing with.

New images were assaulting her mind now, new snapshots that would live in there, probably breed in there too as long as Death played with himself. A jump over the Thames proved that life in London could get worse. They had left behind Chelsea Bridge some time ago. Time had become as abstract as Death. It had ceased to move in a linear fashion, become stagnant and stunk like still water. All Jack had to mark Time's slow movement was the stabbing finger of light that had fallen from the clouds above. As they moved northeast, it stayed to their left, but there was no denying they had drawn closer to it as they slipped through the rubble of central London.

Quiet speculation had run rampant among the ranks of STG agents, even among Jack's three-man biotic team. What was it? Everyone was asking it. Where had it come from? Was it Reaper? Alliance? Something else? Was it a good sign or a bad one? There was no answer, at least not one they readily had access to.

Making matters worse was the other blinding sight farther east of them. It couldn't have been any more than three kilometers from their current position, but the burst of light and the distant earth-shaking roar emanating from it made it all too clear what _it_ was—a surface-to-air-missile launcher. Only these weren't any missiles she had ever seen before. Whether it was the blinding, unholy beam that burst irregularly from it into speeding shuttles or cruisers, or that it sounded like the cry of a Reaper on speed, there was no doubt in Jack's mind that it wasn't an Alliance weapon.

 _ **BWOMMMM!**_

It was colossal, it was deadly, and at close range, it must have been deafening. Meter by agonizing meter of rubble and destruction, they were moving closer to it.

Ahead, the ranks came to a standstill beneath a crumbling wall. Jack peered down their line to see Pebbles signal for a scout. That meant one of her team was up. She rose in an effort to assist, turning to give her squad a quick word of caution until she returned, when Prangley broke formation.

"I got it," he whispered. "Take a break."

Jack nodded. "Watch your back."

"Yes, ma'am."

She watched him go, dismayed and yet proud he was so willing to take a stand. He'd proven himself more than once, on Palaven, and here on Earth. But did she worry? Damn straight. Always. When he came back safe, she would give him an encouraging smile, a high-five; whatever it took to keep him going. But until that happened, she would worry like a damn mother hen. It was a little irritating.

A bop on her arm. Jack turned to see Rodriguez had handed her a canteen while simultaneously looking up at the clouds. She took it, took a gulp, wishing for the buzz of a good beer but getting only what was needed—water—and followed the girl's eyes upward. The clouds above were thick, dark and hellacious, but above that billowy gray stuff that was part ice crystals, part water droplets, part accumulated black smoke, a spectacular light show was going on. Flashes of light above the clouds would appear and then disappear, like heat lightning. Only this wasn't a natural display.

"What do you think is happening up there?" Rodriguez asked in a hushed whisper.

A few moments passed as she watched the show, and as understanding dawned, Jack smiled. "The cavalry is here."

"The Alliance?" Rodriguez sounded more hopeful than she had since they had landed groundside.

"The Alliance and every damn player in the galaxy Shepard could round up."

"You think Commander Shepard is up there, too?"

"Hell yeah, she's up there; gunning for Earth in the Normandy with Joker the smart-ass pilot at the helm."

"Awesome."

"She's up there," Jack reiterated, if only for herself. "I'd bet my left nut…if I had one."

Rodriguez covered a snort. She was still trying not to laugh when Prangley returned at a crouch, his eyes lit with a nervous energy and fresh news on the tip of his tongue. Jack jerked a thumb at him before he could say a word.

"Let's bet his left nut," Jack said, making Rodriguez's fight harder. The screwed up look on Prangley's face didn't help.

"What?" he asked, clearly confused if not concerned at the track of their conversation. He looked up in the direction of Jack's pointed finger. The look in his eyes told Jack he understood instantly what was happening above them, but that was his only acknowledgement. He quickly changed the subject. "The Major says move out. We're going for the high ground."

All joking aside, Jack led her team behind the quickly moving STG team. She didn't ask questions. Kirrahe had led them true since the destruction of the Chelsea Bridge. He hadn't wavered in indecision. He knew exactly where he was going, and that was good, because Jack didn't. Years ago, she had seen her way out of the Teltin Facility with hardly a memory of doing so, but here…here was a jumble of unknown streets, demolished buildings, and bodies left to fester since the attack on Earth started. Not even someone who had lived in this city his entire life and knew it like the back of his hand would have had the wherewithal to navigate this mess. It was a wonder Kirrahe knew what he was doing.

They crossed a street that was only noticeable as a street because of the sound their boots made upon the tarmac, as well as the raised edges of sidewalks. A sign hung askew and damaged above a building with a row of smashed out windows. A soft breeze blew, stirring up the debris and swinging the sign back and forth with a creak of rusty hinges. Jack could only make out a few words:

 _Har—_

 _Lobster &—_

The rest had been seemingly sliced along the diagonal. The thick jagged edges, and the back end of a skycar jutting from the smashed window, meant it wasn't any sword that did the job. Jack looked at the sign and mused, _Hmmm, lobster for dinner_ …if it weren't for the death and destruction all about her, it might have been a good idea, but Jack had no appetite.

They moved on.

Down along the side of the building, a single street that couldn't have been anymore than a back alleyway curved a path out of sight to the left. A street sign attached to the side of the crumbling building's wall read: Gillingham Row SW1. Jack still had no idea where in hell they were, just that they were in a hell where lobster restaurants now served as parking spaces, death was commonplace, and the grinding of the war machine drew steadily onward.

They followed the curve of Gillingham Row off to the left, then back again onto another road. Kirrahe halted them at the street's opening, sent his second, Rentola, ahead to scout the street. He was back in record time, silently ordering them back into the alley and behind a building. This one was in no better shape than the others around them, but it shielded them from the advancing plunder of many feet. Jack listened, and guessed at a Reaper troop of better than twenty. Who knew what sort of monsters (the turian or batarian sort, perhaps), but at least they were going and not stopping. The wait, as the echo of their shambling steps died into the distance, seemed endless.

Yet again, they were on the move.

From Gillingham Row's narrow maw, they slipped out and back into the open. Kirrahe led them along the sidewalk, in the shadow of ruined buildings and past burnt, twisted things that used to be trees. Jack was on the verge of wondering where the "high ground" was when the flow of their march led straight toward an elongated, but tall glass building. Her eyes searched for entrances, an open doorway perhaps. She had already begun to guess at her favorite pebble-headed salarian's quest, when Kirrahe skirted them around the corner of what might have once been a bank and toward a downward sloping ramp. Ahead was a parked skycar, almost pristinely undamaged, and a loading door opened wide enough from the bottom for them to slide under one at a time.

They were in. Now, what was the plan?

Paying little attention to the crates and boxes dominating the warehouse, the Major posted two men within and led the rest of them through the building as if he'd been there before, down a debris-strewn corridor, through several doors and eventually into the building proper. There were no people here, no bodies, and save for a smattering of glass shards that seemed to have penetrated into every corner, the building had passed through the battles relatively unscathed. Their destination wasn't a room with a view, though.

Pebbles stopped at a closed door around the corner from the lift, sent in a scout and then waved them through. The time for guessing had passed. Jack slipped by the Major into the upward maze of a twisting stairwell.

"So, what's the plan this time?"

"We go up."

"No shit, Sherlock. What are we looking for?"

She thought he might have been angry at her insolence, but he smiled. "A good view. Follow me," was his answer as he took the first two steps. "Commander Rentola, post guards on this floor. Alert me the moment anything changes."

"Yes, sir!" Rentola moved out with four more salarian soldiers.

"What about us?" The question came from an increasingly nervous Rodriguez.

"The rest of you, remain here," Kirrahe continued. "Watch our flank. We won't be long."

Jack spared a glance at Rodriguez and Prangley. Separating was never a good idea, not in Jack's mind, but her kids would be fine, even though Rodriguez was a bit frayed around the edges. She would have Prangley to help keep her backbone straight for a while. Giving them a thumbs up, Jack followed the major up the stairwell and into the unknown.

 **EEE**

 ** _W_** inded. Hugely winded. Jack needed to give up the smokes. What sucked was, she really needed one right now; been needing one, in fact, ever since Battersea and the number of times they'd nearly lost their lives, no thanks to the salarian crew. But those damn things were hell on her system. Smoking and climbing multiple flights of stairs did not mix. Pebbles, however, hardly stopped to catch a breath. He took the steps two at a time, forcing Jack to keep up. She wasn't about to let some scrawny salarian beat her at anything. If she could match workouts with the likes of one James Vega, she could beat this old salarian up eleven flights of stairs.

"Tell me something, major," Jack said, taking a deep breath and trying not to show her shortness of breath. When Pebbles came to a stop just below the last flight, Jack almost gave him a hug. "How the hell do you know you're way around London so well? Can't just be good omni-tool maps."

The Salarian smiled. "No. No maps needed. I'm a student of your London. Always have been. From my youngest days, I've studied it. Intrigued by its long history of growth and expansion."

Jack frowned. Didn't make any sense to her. "What the hell for?"

Kirrahe moved to the next flight. Maybe it was just in an effort to keep moving, but Jack had a suspicion the major was slightly embarrassed. She couldn't see it in any rise of color on his cheeks. Salarians didn't blush in that way (though, in what way they did, Jack couldn't have said, nor did she really care to know), but through his downward glance and the miniscule smile that played at his lips, Jack could read Pebbles like a book.

"A few minutes ago, you called me Sherlock. Despite your expletive, I was flattered. I am an avid fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle."

"Who?"

"The author from the late eighteen hundreds, Earth period. He created the great Sherlock Holmes."

Jack shrugged. "Sorry, Major. You're talking gibberish to me. I'm not from Earth and I don't know much about it, least of all who wrote what or when."

"Then, I too am sorry for you. In Conan Doyle's stories, Sherlock Holmes was a deductive genius who assisted the local constabulary in solving murders. By mere observation—the way a person dressed, the condition of the palms of the hands, the scuff marks on the soles of their shoes—Holmes could deduce their occupation, their station in life, and whether or not they indulged in too much liquor on a regular basis."

"Yeah?"

"The only person with the same mental prowess that I would dare compare to Holmes would be my former protégé, and your former colleague, Mordin Solus."

Jack couldn't help but smile. "Sounds like Mordin. He was good at figuring stuff like that out."

"Yes, he had a great deductive mind. The galaxy is now the lesser without him in it. I miss him terribly. I was but the Watson to his Sherlock, I fear; Watson being Holmes' self-effacing sidekick, who basked in the shadow of the consulting detective's marvelous mind." Kirrahe shook his head. "But enough of that. Get me started and I could go on and on. As Mordin might have said, 'Time short. Work to do. Reapers to kill.'"

"Got my vote." She gave the major a playful punch. "Let's go kill some Reapers."

A few minutes later, the two of them stepped out of the stairwell and onto the roof, Jack struggling to keep pace with the fast-moving salarian major, and Kirrahe with little more than a deep breath of not so fresh air.

"You're trying to kill me, Kirrahe," Jack said. She might have ended there if her eyes had not caught sight of how high up they were. "Are you sure this building is sound?"

"One of the strongest in London. It's withstood some of the worst fighting, and for our mission, has the best vantage point."

"Best vantage point to what?"

Knowing the ever present danger of Harvesters, Kirrahe kept low, using air conditioning units as cover while they made their way from one side of the roof to the other. They dashed across an open area to take cover near a low westward facing wall. All around them was a city in ruins. Reapers were an ever-present sight. Jack could see three of them from this side of the roof, and many more in the distance across the Thames. Fires, explosions, jets screaming through the sky and taking out locations below. She wondered which one of them was her favorite Cheerleader.

She heard that Miranda had drawn a few eyes (and not in the typical fashion) when she first joined the war effort. Her Cerberus ties had Alliance brass twitching in their tights, but she proved herself useful when it counted—she and several other ex-operatives laid waste to a couple of still-active Cerberus units. Just the thought of it made Jack smile. Served that smarmy Illusive bastard right to see everything he'd built come to an end along with the Reapers, and to have it served to him on a silver platter by the very one he thought might be his champion—Miranda Lawson. The woman wasn't just a bombshell, she was a bombshell with brains, and she knew how to use'em.

Jack shrugged off her thoughts of Miranda. Wherever she was, she was busy blasting the shit out of anything Reaper, and putting her days with the Illusive Man behind her. Jack was doing the same, and right now, she wasn't here to think about either of them. She looked on the city around her. On a normal day, she might see the London Eye, a one hundred and thirty-five meter tall Ferris wheel, or The Shard, or any of the present day's more modern buildings. Today, the only things that dominated the skyline were the blinding cannon trying to shoot down shuttles, and the beam of light that had fallen from the sky.

But Kirrahe hadn't brought her all the way up here to see the sights. From his pack, he produced a set of digital binoculars and handed them to her.

Jack took them. "What am I looking for?"

Kirrahe pointed over the wall. "There. See the four domes, and the spire beside it?"

"Yeah." As Jack raised the binoculars, her mind went to the past.

"That's Westminster Cathedral."

Church. Religion. God. They all boiled down to the same thing for Jack— _nothing_. Sure, she had joined a cult, but the group wasn't steeped in any belief or tradition, at least not while she had been a part of the commune. It was about being human, being a biotic, and being proud to be both; and yeah, it was about money too, but for Jack it was also about showing the galaxy what you're capable of and telling them where to stick it if they didn't like it. And she did a couple of times…well, more than a couple of times while in the cult's company. Their leader was unruly and sinking into the deep end of batshit crazy, but he had understood…in his own weird way, even if he wasn't a biotic. She'd admired him for a while; did as some of the others and shaved her head to be like him. But like everything else in Jack's world back then, the luster wore off. She split when the others started looking at him as some kind of god, started calling him "Father." That's where it got too weird to handle. He wasn't a god. He was a messed up former soldier suffering from PTSD, much like herself.

Maybe that's why she abhorred the idea of church and religion. The idea of calling some man with a god-complex "father" when he wasn't even close to being the faceless man who had helped bring her into this world, churned something up in her. Besides, Jack didn't believe in a god. After the hell she had experienced growing up, after all the things she had seen and done, how could she? There had never been any divine intervention in her life. She had no memories of family or happiness, just pain and suffering. The only thing close to divine intervention had been meeting Shepard. The commander had helped her get her life straight, but that didn't make her a god. Shepard was just as mortal and just as likely to get herself killed in this war as Jack was.

A salty concoction brimmed in her eyes at the thought and Jack blinked it away. _Yeah, you're trying really hard to put the past behind you, huh?_ she thought and made herself concentrate on the mission and the view in the binoculars. A few blocks distance became a few meters distance viewed through the lens. The nearly three-hundred-year-old brick and stone cathedral filled every corner of Jack's vision. Four domes did indeed dominate the roof of the Byzantine-like structure, as did the contrasting peaked extensions and pyramidal turrets on its southwestern face. The tower, or "spire" as Pebbles put it, stood erect in the binoculars' view. No more than a glorified penis in Jack's estimation, just as the domes resembled breasts with rock-hard nipples.

But these images, thoughts, and visions of the past, were all secondary, passing in the milliseconds in which her eyes first glimpsed the cathedral. What she saw blew those thoughts out of her head as surely as would a bullet.

What had once been a pristine landscape, bordered by trees and highrise buildings, now lay desolate. Though the church still stood, another brick and mortar building to the rear was a smoking rubble. Pockets of fire sprang from it, but that wasn't all that blighted the area. Her ears had picked up on gunfire from the moment they landed on Earth. The sound of it was everywhere. This particular battle was closer. She could see them—cannibals, brutes, ravagers, marauders—on the church grounds below. Their bands were small, but grouped at different points, trying to get inside. And Jack had a pretty good idea they weren't there for Sunday mass. The close-up sight of husks crawling like human versions of spiders along the cathedral's exterior was a pretty good indication.

"Holy shit," Jack breathed. "Our team is in there?"

"Yes, and taking heavy fire by the look of things. Hard to say how much longer they'll last against this barrage, but I would wager they don't have much time left."

Pebbles was right. The team wouldn't last long against such an assault. They still had ammo as evidenced by the sight of rapid-fire flashes of light from high windows, picking off husks one at a time, but who knew how long their supplies would last.

Jack handed the binoculars back. "That damn place has more windows than the Citadel. Husks will be inside in no time."

"I don't see light or movement from any of them," Kirrahe announced as he looked through the lenses. "They wouldn't have had the time to board windows."

"Not to mention the equipment."

"Or they could have taken refuge within an interior room."

"Maybe they have a shield generator."

"Either way, we must get to them."

"Shit," she said under her breath. "How in hell are we supposed to get in there?"

"Red herring."

Jack gave the salarian a sideways glance. "This is not the time to be gettin' the munchies, boss."

"Not the fish! The phrase. A diversion, Jack, a way to draw them away from the cathedral, so we can get in."

"Like what?"

"What I haven't told you…what I've been commanded not to tell anyone…is who's aid we're coming to. Their mission is so sensitive, and yet so important, it must be preserved, no matter the cost."

"So, why tell me?"

"Because I know I can trust you, Jack…and the information might be of interest to you."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "Okay?"

"Three letters. L—E—T."

The eyebrow dropped, but the eyes widened. Pebbles didn't have to say more. LET, an acronym for Leviathan Enthrallment Team.

"I thought that was just a rumor."

In fact, it was Shepard who'd let the Alliance's idea slip to her one day on the Citadel. Inside Purgatory, to be exact. Dancing like a couple of fools, she had told Jack the story over the beat of the music. No one on the dance floor had been paying any more attention to her and Shepard than they were to the other dancers. Shepard had felt free to speak, as Jack had, of the war and the battles and what they were doing to bring the hell of it to an end.

Jack shook her head. "I didn't think the Alliance had the balls to really pull it off."

"Not the Alliance, not fully. The taskforce is not made up of Alliance soldiers. Their mixed, diversified, and used to taking on high-risk missions…suicide missions, if you will."

If Jack's eyes opened any wider, they'd have fallen out. "Shit…you don't mean…?" She brought her gaze back to the cathedral, suddenly sick to her stomach. _"Who?_ "

"I don't think I have to tell you, but I do believe I have a rather _elementary_ diversion for getting us inside."

A devious little grin slipped across the salarian's features, like dark clouds on a bright summer day, curving his thin lips and narrowing his large eyes. Jack felt compelled to match it. She didn't know if salarian's believed in reincarnation, but even if they didn't, she had seen the ghost of Mordin Solus in that grin.

 **EEE**

 ** _E_** lementary.

Jack had never been much of a reader. Once, locked up in her "room" at the Teltin Facility, watching life go by for everyone else outside her window, someone had slipped something under her door. (To this day, she had no idea who it was. Probably some Cerberus employee who hadn't realized what they had signed up for and couldn't get away once they did. They were just trying to be nice, she guessed. Jack didn't like to think about that. She liked to believe whoever it was had moved on to bigger and better jobs within Cerberus, or out of Cerberus altogether. If they hadn't, if that person was still there when she escaped…) Starved of social interaction, Jack had crawled from her corner of the room to see what it was, desperate for anything new, and yet suspicious as well.

It was paper, stacked and bound, like a book. Only it wasn't a book. The pages were shiny, reflecting the dull light in the room.

Was it some sort of test? If she touched the shiny pages, would they shock her? Or worse, would it set off a chain reaction, exposing the growing biotic ability within her? She wasn't allowed reading material. She had no vid console in her "room." This wasn't a vacation spot and neither was it a boarding school. This was her hell, and in hell, one wasn't given fun things to do. What she had, she had because she took it, made it hers, like the little blue and white stuffed lizard she had taken from a kid who'd lost it in a fight against her. He had called the toy Eezo. Had, in fact, written it in blue marker on the side. Jack never played with it. It was just sort of there, a constant reminder that in this world, what you wanted you had to take. She wanted freedom.

But, for now, she would settle for what lay just inside her door. Snaking out one finger, she touched the corner of it and jerked her hand back fast, as if it might bite. Detecting no discernible reaction, she tried touching it a few more times until she was certain it wasn't an immediate danger. Then, she grabbed and shuffled back with it over to her corner, away from the window, away from the door, and out of sight of the camera. The bed blocked her from one side and the desk from the other.

Jack didn't know what to call it. It looked like a book, so she called it a book, but the pages weren't like a book. They were slick, smooth. It felt like something wrong, something sinful, yet the images upon it were not. It was a kids' book, and though Jack had no real concept of what it was like to be a kid, she knew this without having to think too hard about it. Inside were pictures of kids laughing, kids doing crafts, kids playing games. There were pictures of animals and articles on planetary science (photosynthesis and scientific shit like that), and stories, oh so many stories made just for little kids. She had loved that damn book while she had it.

As time passed, and the book was discovered hidden underneath her mattress (she'd paid for having it; paid dearly), Jack forced the memories out of her head. She pushed them out, rejected them as one might reject a person who had hurt them. What remained were fuzzy images, blurry indiscernible objects without meaning, like bad eyesight. Except for one—a picture of a girl about her age at the time the book had been slid under her door. The girl was sitting on a cushioned seat in an alcove with a window. There was a book in her hand and she was smiling. That one image remained, the only one Jack kept. It too served as a reminder of all the things she never had, and would never have. She would never be a kid. She would never be normal. Because those things only got you in trouble.

When the book was taken, when she paid her dues for having it, Jack had wished hell upon the person who had slid it under her door. Now that she thought about it, she had probably visited that hell upon them. She hoped she hadn't, but she probably did.

Thus, Jack had never really taken up reading since those days. Not for recreation, anyway. She always had too much other shit going on in life. And with the Reaper invasion, shit had gotten real. But as she crouched on the rooftop, staring out at the blighted landscape below and listening to Kirrahe's "red herring" plan, Jack promised herself, when this was all over, when the Reapers were gone, and if she made it out alive, the first books she'd pick up would be the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Pebble's plan, though not entirely original, was part war strategizing and part Sherlockian ingenuity. It was elementary…

 **EEE**

 ** _K_** ing's Scholars' Passage, he called it. A short road a block over. Thanks to the Reapers, getting there didn't involve making the block and sacrificing precious minutes. An easy matter of slipping between the rubble and through buildings that would have been intact and impassable before the attack. King's Scholars' Passage connected to Carlisle Place, a road once home to a row of elegant flats that now lay in smoldering ruins. Here or there within the rubble one could see what might have once been a piano, an armchair, a couch, a teddy bear without an arm.

Carlisle Place connected to Ashley Place, where old construction met with new, and where down the length of the road and upward, one could see the spire of the Westminster Cathedral. On a good day, there would have been sunlight and white puffy clouds to see along the horizontal length of sky, and green trees dotting the sidewalk. On this night, old construction had turned to charred, smoking rubble along with the new. Brick, mortar, glass, metal, all had become debris on the streets of London. Sunlight didn't exist, trees were broken, smoldering, and the white clouds above had become dirty, saturated rags.

Amidst this street-level, three-sixty disaster, the cathedral was the only thing that dominated the sky. To Jack, it ceased to remind her of phallicism. Instead, it stabbed the air like a defiant middle finger aimed squarely at the Reapers. No way they were ever gonna take it down, and if they managed to, the monolithic old building would go down fighting, taking the Reapers along with it in the process.

The cathedral was their objective. Protect it at all costs. Not for any religious significance, not for what it represented, but for the lives trapped within it. This time, her orders did not involve cunning or hiding behind rubble, looking for the best advantage in order to take out your enemy. Kirrahe's plan was straightforward: "March in. Be seen. Draw their attention."

The idea sounded like insanity to Jack, but she wasn't afraid. And, for a wonder, neither were her kids. Prangley and Rodriguez marched alongside her, every bit of the same ferocity and determination upon their faces. They were nearly there. A harmony of growls and grunts, gunfire and explosives, hisses and roars echoed across the Cathedral Piazza toward them. They jumped over or around obstacles like downed trees and bent over streetlights until their field of vision was cleared, until the rabble pounding at the doors of the cathedral was laid bare before their eyes.

Two massive oak doors sat beneath a semi-circular arch, in which was a religious depiction of a man on a throne that meant absolutely nothing to Jack. Her concentration wasn't on the ancient artwork, but on the beasts encircling the structure.

In the sixteen or seventeen hundreds, invading armies would have chopped and denuded a large tree to use as a battering ram, but these guys didn't need battering rams. They had brutes. They beat their heavy armor-laden shoulders upon the main door, while their little buddies worked on breaking through the smaller doors on either side. But these dimwitted creatures knew nothing of the strength and resiliency of English oak. With the added strength of modern technological breakthroughs in mass effect fields, those bastards weren't getting in that way without a tank. Now that Jack and her team had broken into their ranks, they weren't getting in at all.

She would have thrown a couple of explosives into the fray, lightening their load by a dozen at least, but reason called the idea unfeasible. She'd been commanded only to draw their attention, not engage them in battle. Jack grimaced at the insurgent horde. She would have liked to tear through a good handful of them on her own. Sucked not having her weapon handy. Sucked big time. Nevertheless, one must follow orders. Even one as self-reliant and independent as Jack. Be that as it may, no one could command attention like the Psychotic Biotic. She had two foolproof methods: one, her biotic ability—one blast of her shockwave would grab the attention of anything with two eyes and a brain—and second, her mouth. While she could not employ the one, she could certainly employ the second.

Jack gave Prangley a nod and he followed with a quick tap on his omni-tool. Her mouth was now large as life.

"Hey, you mutated fuckers!"

Her voice filled the entire square, flattening the sound of their beastly growls and grunts as they attempted to trample the cathedral to the ground. One by one, the creatures turned, looking for the source of the voice. Their brains might not have been capable of comprehending the insult toward their new form, but their mutated eyes had no difficulty picking three seemingly lonely figures standing unprotected in the open.

"Oh shit," Rodriguez muttered.

Jack sensed the girl had taken a step back, but there was no turning away here. The battle for Earth had become a stinking pit of quickmud. They were in it. Neck deep and sinking. Squirm and you'll go down quicker.

Jack stepped forward. "That's right, you overgrown shits."

A husk, crawling along the brick wall of the cathedral, stopped long enough to wail at her. A cannibal growled and raised his gun.

"Look right here."

With a grin, Jack raised her hands and swirled them in the air like a conjurer. Between her palms, a blue ball of biotic light began to grow, which she pulled and expanded. The beasts watched with an ever-mounting mesmerism, caught in the hypnotic glow of Jack's little light show, until the ball of light became the very image of the thing they sought to destroy.

The blue ball had taken shape into the image of a Leviathan artifact, just as Shepard had described it to her. She held it, as proud as any decoy might, above her head. It was no more real than a glowing beach ball, as real as her ridiculous sorceress-like maneuvers, and as she stood there like a kid on a beach about to throw the ball to the muscled brute on the other side of the net, Jack almost laughed. What a sight it would make if she could throw it! As much as these beasts wanted to destroy every Leviathan weapon sent to enthrall them, they also sought to avoid them like the plague. If she could toss it right now, it would be like watching kids play dodge ball, but playing around with a bunch of dimwitted monsters wasn't part of the plan.

 _Draw their attention._

Jack knew her mission. Standing center of the Cathedral Piazza, she dematerialized the glowing ball of light as a magician would vanish a rabbit. It was almost kind of fun to witness the look of astonishment on the face of a monster. A brute roared. A marauder howled. There was only one thing left to do.

"Move!"

They moved, and fast, but not with a fear of death. They moved with the intent of taking every Reaper horde with them for the ride. And by the sound of pounding, brutish feet, and the static of gunfire, they were accomplishing just that.

Taking the street behind them, avoiding the way in which they had come, Jack led her team in an alternate direction. The building that dominated the west side of the piazza was a mostly incinerated mess—glass windows blown out, fires erupting from within, coating the concrete struts in a thick, black stain of smoke—but it stood resiliently upon its foundation. Those same struts stabbed into the sidewalk as columns, supporting a covered walkway, which Jack now took. The echo of three pairs of feet beneath it, one possible moment away from being crushed under the building's collapsing weight, was as eerily surreal as the monsters that pursued them. Every sound, every sight was unnatural, improbable, and yet as real as the skin covering her body, as the blood pumping through her veins, and the air rushing in and out of her lungs…and the sight of the Cerberus shuttle on the landing pad at the Teltin Facility.

Jack ran for it. Jack ran to freedom. She ignored the roar of her pursuers and she dashed to pieces those who stood in her way.

The columns were coming to an end. They would soon be back out in the open, but Jack could still see the shuttle. Through buildings, past flames and rubble, it was there, waiting for her. Jack ran. A street away from where they had entered the piazza, Jack chanced a look back down the length of the walkway and saw more than she expected. Her pursuers had grown not only in numbers, but in size. Brutes led the pack, collapsing concrete struts, hoping to trap their quarry. One column shredded, then another, until the building, under the strain of its own weight, began to buckle.

Were she truly still inside Teltin, trying to escape, Jack would have burst through any flying debris with her biotics. She would have tossed entire boulders out of her way. But that wasn't the case here. The building came down, brutes and their like steering well clear of it to keep up the pursuit, but Jack and her team sifted through, losing themselves in the dust storm that followed.

"This way," Jack called to her charges.

She led them across a debris-strewn cross street, and into the shattered display window of a crumbling building. Inside was what used to be a coffee and pastry shop. It too was on its last legs, but that didn't matter. Getting these bastards to keep up their pursuit was the plan. The chase was still on. Jack could hear their fevered vocalizations. Running over broken glass, toppled chairs and tables, the three of them didn't stop. Not even when they spied a couple of charred bodies in the corner, seated at a table, hands clasped, and dried blood splattered upon the wall behind them. Jack tried not to notice. They jumped out a display window on the other side and found themselves right where they wanted to be—Vauxhall Bridge Road.

They could have found debris to hide behind, an opening in one of the building to cower in, but that was not the plan. Instead of cowering, they ran south, following the Vauxhall Bridge Road like one might follow a flowing river, and where this river flowed was right toward the very building she and Pebbles had perched upon hardly an hour ago.

"They're coming!" Prangley announced with a high-pitched voice.

"Don't stop! Keep moving!"

They had a long way to go running on open, unimpeded ground. From the opening of Vauxhall Bridge Road to their destination was a whopping two hundred meters distance. Jack knew because she had measured it herself. Never a fan of competitive sports in general (save for those that involved weapons and simulated enemies), Jack had not once taken the time to watch a foot race. To make a 200-meter dash in less than twenty seconds was something of a feet in the runners' world, one Jack knew nothing of, but she easily crushed those numbers. With monsters intent upon killing you, it wasn't a wonder. Even an experienced runner might beat his own fastest record in that event. Jack wasn't an experienced runner, but she was an experienced survivor, and a survivor used every skill in his or her arsenal to stay alive just one more day, or in this case, for just one more mission.

Ever before her was the shuttle, her freedom. She would take it by all means necessary, even as the gap between her team and the horde behind them closed exponentially.

There! The warehouse door!

Winded, but strong, Jack made for it. The smoking-induced breathlessness did not grip her this time. Going down on one side, she slid for the opening, feeling the concrete's desire to grate her skin like cheese. She was in, Prangley and Rodriguez beside her, twisting through the warehouse's maze. Behind them, the warehouse door tore from its rollaway moorings, the sound that of tortured metal. Crates flew, bouncing off walls. Unearthly howls and grunts followed, but Jack and her team beat them into the building.

Through doors, down corridors, up the stairwell, following Kirrahe's mental map, until at last they made it to their destination—fifth floor of the building, denuded by explosives and charred by the fire of destruction. There was nothing here other than the remains of what might have once been an office space. Partitions and walls had been blown away. Workstations lay in smoldering rubbles. It was as if a small bomb had erupted on this floor. All that stood was an empty floor, some seventy meters in length from end to end, interrupted only by load bearing struts and a lift shaft.

Jack halted Prangley and Rodriguez as close to center as she could.

"Now what?" Rodriguez asked, breathing heavily.

Jack looked left, then right. "Now we wait."

For the moment, the three of them were the only ones occupying the floor, but that would change. They were coming. The slimy dogs hadn't followed them all the way over here for nothing. They yelped and frothed at the mouth with every savage step in their direction. The first indication was the crack of framework to their left. Rodriguez whipped her head around too fast not to suffer the effects of whiplash later…if, in fact, there was a "later." The door to the stairwell bulged like a bloated, impregnated belly. The screech of twisting metal reached their ears, but this time from the right. They were coming from both sides.

"Get ready!"

"Just say when," Prangley said at her side, unhitching a small device from his belt.

Jack watched him thumb the safety, and snatched it from his hand.

"No."

"Hey!"

"I've got a better idea," she said, watching the stairwell door to her left. It was about to pop like an overripe melon. She grabbed Rodriguez and stuffed the device into the girl's shaking hand.

"What?" she said. "Me? No, you don't want me to do it."

"Hell yes, I want you to do it." Jack heard something to her left snap, give way. It wouldn't be long now. "It's time to buck up, Rodriguez, take your balls out of Prangley's pants and act like what you are."

This time is was Prangley who sorted laughter. Of all times to be laughing, this wasn't one of them. Still, Jack had to struggle to keep a grin off her face. A good back of the hand slap across Prangley's chest did the job. He shut up quick.

Rodriguez looked at him with a raised eyebrow, then back at Jack. "And what am I?"

No sooner had the words left her lips than the door on the left popped from the wall like the cork of a champagne bottle, followed closely by the one on the right. Brutes on either side piled in with the force of an exploding pressure cooker, and barreled into the wall on the other side. They were quickly followed by armed cannibals and marauders, ready to pelt them with bullets.

"You're goddamn warrior, that's what you are!" she screamed to Rodriguez above monstrous mewlings, and raised her hands.

Jack didn't waste time beginning her sorceress act, forming the image of the artifact to dissuade their many eager trigger fingers. It had the desired effect, slowing down the monsters' forward approach, easing their grip upon their weapons. They screeched and howled their distaste at this display of power over them, but still they came, impelled forward by some unknown need. Whether it was to destroy or to be enthralled, Jack could not fathom. She did not truly hold anything within her palms. The artifact was artificial.

Still they came.

"Shit," she whispered to herself. Soon one would let fly a lone bullet, and the gig would be up.

"What—when—when do I—?"

"Steady," Jack said, and though she did not look at Rodriguez, she could almost see her thumb hovering like a shaky, indecisive leaf over the button. "Steady, Rodriguez. Hold your ground."

"When—?"

"You'll know when!"

"Husks!" Prangley shouted behind her.

Jack turned, and sure enough, a horde of them were pouring in through the shattered windows in front and behind her. They were everywhere. In seconds, Jack would be utterly surrounded, trapped, so far from escape or freedom as any nightmare had ever put her. For the first time in her memory, Jack could not see the shuttle. The obstacles were closing in, and she had no access to her best defense mechanism. She could not swat her enemies away or mangle them with a sheer force of biotic will.

All she had was her mouth. Jack screamed, not out of fear or despair. This was a warrior's cry.

Husk claws, mere centimeters from her face. Instinctively, Jack dropped the artificial artifact, letting it dissipate into the nothingness it truly was, but instead of shielding her face or fighting, she grabbed the hands of the warriors on either side of her. Prangley and Rodriguez followed with their own warrior cry. She didn't have to tell Rodriguez what time it was, nor did the girl ask for permission with either looks or words. The time was now.

Rodriguez's fingers held a white-knuckled grip upon the device. A fire had lit in her eyes, the flame of a warrior, a burning indignation of knowledge that everything happening around them was an egregious wrong to humanity, and to every species in the galaxy. No one had the right to arbitrarily exterminate another species, no matter their wrongs, no matter their imperfections. An inhuman screech behind her ear was the final proof. What they fought wasn't a species. They were a construct. A construct of evil.

Rodriguez depressed the red button, and with it, the seconds began to pass like hours.

The floor quaked, shifted, like the proverbial rug being pulled out from beneath one's feet, and began the slow drop that, sped up to realtime, would have been like the dropping of a stone. They fell with it, as did every beast. They fell interminably slow, like falling off the side of the world. They fell into an eruption of fiery flames, wrenching the beasts' menacing howls into howls of rage. They had tricked them, and tricked them far better than Jack ever thought they would. She had thought Pebbles' plan to lead them away from the cathedral insane, but it had worked, despite the risk and the inestimable cost.

As a stone falls through water, slowly and inexorably to the bottom, they fell, and Jack lost traction on the whole world. She had not feet, nor body, nor substance. She had become incorporeal. The only thing real, as the world plummeted below her, were the hands she held. Full of life and meaning and future…until the husk before her shocked her into a state of incarnate reality as Jack had never experienced before. Not inside Teltin, not locked within the Blue Suns prison starship, or even caught in the grip of the guards and prisoners who raped her when she first arrived.

The sensation of the husk's clawed fingers sinking into the flesh of her neck, sunk the realities of her old life to a new level of insignificance (mostly because of her ability to escape into her mind when the body was being abused). But this sensation was consciousness beyond reality. As they fell, and as the husk's claws ended her warrior's cry, rended arteries, severed larynx and hyoid and the muscles that surrounded them, Jack had never felt more alive. She could almost feel the spurt of her warm life's blood. The last thing Jack saw was the shuttle, door opened, lights blinking, and freedom right on the other side. She smiled.

Over the expanse of time stretched out, pulled apart like putty, the seconds caught up with each other and began to pass as they ought. Flames overtook the building on Vauxhall Bridge Road, where Jack and Major Kirrahe had set their Sherlockian plans into motion, and a series of explosions shook the earth. Like lovers who hadn't seen each other in years, the innumerable floors above rushed down to meet the ground in a tremendous roaring crash, instantly silencing the screams from within.

For some time, Vauxhall Bridge Road was lost in a sweltering sea of grey clouds.

* * *

 **Did I just kill Jack? Guess you'll have to wait for the next Jack chapter to find out, but I do hope** **you liked this one. A little worried some die hard Mass Effect fans might find it a bit corny.**

 **Fun fact: The lobster restaurant sign that Jack saw sliced on the diagonal is (or should I say was) a real restaurant called _Hardcore Lobster & More. _Strangely enough, I looked back at Google maps tonight and found that they've changed their name to _Hardcore Burger & More_. Sure, this restaurant wouldn't exist that far into the future, but it's fun mixing a dose of reality in with a bit of fiction.**

 **Another fun fact: I've tried to breathe some life into Jack's life as a child. We, as gamers, don't get to see too much of it. I wanted to delve into her past as much as I could within the framework of this story, give her something to shoot for as she fights to keep herself and her kids alive. The story of someone sneaking her a kid's magazine to look at was inspired, in part, by a piece of artwork on I saw on DeviantArt. It's called _Soon, Eezo..._ by "raccooncitizen." If you get a chance, you should go take a look at it. It's a beautiful piece of art based on a young Jack trapped in the Teltin Facility.**

 **One more fun fact: I was completely immersed in binge watching _Sherlock_ when I wrote this, if you couldn't tell.**


	9. A Signal To No ONE

**MASS EFFECT: ONE**

* * *

 _"The process is as important as the result."_

 _~Legion~_

* * *

 **A Signal to no ONE**

 **Crucible Project – After Endgame**

 ** _T_** he Koh-i-Noor.

Lain deep within the Earth's mantle, nestled as a babe in swaddling clothes, it formed over the ages, grew strong and magnificent as the Earth belched it toward the surface in a series of volcanic eruptions. For billions of years, the Koh-i-Noor had made the ground its home, and the Earth its mother. It was happy there, held in its mother's arms, cared for and nurtured.

It knew nothing of the winds of time or the people walking the surface above, until the day greedy hands plucked it from the ground, stole it away from the warmth of its mother. Almost from the moment of its finding in the mines near Guntur, India, the Koh-i-Noor diamond was doomed to forget the meaning of "home" or "mother." Having first landed into the hands of the South Indian Kakatiya dynasty in the 13th century, it consequently jumped from one dynasty after another, one empire after another, for hundreds of years. Time, and a multitude of rulers, gave the diamond untold reverence, diverse names, but it wasn't until its acquisition by one of the most powerful Iranian rulers of the 1700's, Nader Shah, that the Koh-i-Noor gained its name.

Legend says, one of Shah's consorts appraised it this way: "If a strong man were to throw four stones—one south, one east, one west, and a fifth one up into the air—and if the space between them were to be filled with gold, all would not equal the value of the Koh-i-Noor."

It means "Mountain of Light," and truly, it could be called so. At the time of the consort's evaluation, the diamond was purported to be nearly eight hundred carats. Today's weight held it at one hundred and six, but it still retained every ounce of its beauty. Fourteen hundred years and the touch of many prying fingers had not dulled it. From its entombment upon thrones and its imprisonment upon bracelets and other such jewelry, to adorning the crown of the Queen of England in the late 1800's, the Koh-i-Noor had known many abodes, and maybe it even enjoyed a few of them, but it would never truly return to its "home." It would never be returned to its mother. Even now, the diamond was so far away from its mother that the remembrance of her had been forgotten.

The Koh-i-Noor, Mountain of Light, now lay in one gloved palm, marveled and fawned over like no other could. The owner of this palm smiled down at the diamond sparkling up at her. It was a good thing she had taken Kohi, as her new owner like to call it (calling it Koh-i-Noor was too much of a mouthful), far away from her mother. Earth's scorched dirt would do nothing for its luster, and as for adorning the Queen of England's crown…well, the Queen, who had more jewels than one of her limited lifespan required, was no more. And the Earth itself had nearly gone the way of the Queen.

If one looked at it a certain way, Kohi really needed a surrogate mother. At least for the time being. The Earth wasn't completely scorched. It'll come back in time, thanks to one Shepard of the Alliance.

So maybe Kohi owed a favor to that Alliance maverick for saving its forgotten mother, as did Kohi's surrogate. Shepard had saved her in more ways than one, and not just from complete annihilation. She had saved her soul, as well as her other most prized possession. It was the only other thing that could hold a candle to Kohi's brilliance, and Kasumi Goto owed Shepard the utmost of favors for having helped her retrieve it.

Omni-tool lit, illuminating the small space she occupied in her quarters, Kasumi tapped in a simple code, nothing too elaborate (at least not for someone such as herself). She waited as the omni-tool made the proper connections, ticking thoughtfully, almost intelligently as one might tap a finger on their chin when in the depths of a particularly difficult problem, and then the safe cracked.

There it was. A wooden box. Rather rare in this day and age. It had once been a writing box back in the day, many, many centuries before she roamed the galaxy. Her people used it to store ink jars, pen and paper. Kasumi would love to say that it belonged to her great-great-grandmother to the umpteenth power, but the truth wasn't so rich. Oh, the wooden box with its intricate carvings had a story. A great one, in fact, but that was another story for another day. It's what the box contained that held the secret to this one.

Kasumi opened the latch which held no lock, and inside, upon a bed of red silk lay Keiji's graybox. She smiled at it. Touched it lovingly with one finger, and wished beyond all wishes that one such touch could bring back all that had been locked within it. One corner of Kasumi's mouth quirked upward. She was nothing if not a realist. The graybox was simply her one way of hanging onto a bright spot in her past. The reality was, Keiji was dead and he wasn't coming back. That wasn't so for everyone. Some people still had a chance. She knew of one in particular, in fact. This one had more than a slim chance in hell of surviving, and after all she'd sacrificed to rid the galaxy of its bug problem, she deserved more respect than to be treated like an inconsequential blip on a vid screen.

Laying Kohi securely beside the one true love of her life, Kasumi closed the lid and placed the wooden box back inside the safe. That quirky grin remained.

"Time to return the favor, Shep."

As though she were made of nothing more than electricity, Kasumi condensed into a drizzle of white sparks and disappeared.

 **EEE**

 _ **M**_ aybe it was out of loyalty. A feeling of indebtedness, perhaps? That had to be it. Otherwise, why would she have gone against her every inclination?

As far back as Kasumi could remember, she had always been on the move. Hard to stay in one place when one had a tendency toward kleptomania. People get so sensitive when their things go missing, so vengeful. Still, even as a child in the care of her grandmother, she could not stay in one place for long. Grandmother nicknamed her _chouchou_ , Japanese for butterfly. That was little Kasumi, always flitting about here or there, never settling, never reconciling herself to a homeplace. She thought she'd had a home once, with Keiji, but…

Loyalty. That must be it. Loyalty to Shepard. Loyalty to her cause. Of course, why wouldn't she be? She lived in this galaxy, right? If it went down, so did she, and so did every caper she might have the pleasure of finding herself in in the future. There couldn't be any other reason why Kasumi Goto, "the best thief in the business," would willingly plant herself in an Alliance dreadnaught that had streaked through the stars in protection of the last best hope for life in the galaxy. It was all Shepard's fault really. Tempting her with flatteries and the idea of "all that expensive tech just lying around" on the Crucible. The clever minx. She'd sucked her in as easily as waving a lollipop at a kid with a sugar addiction. And to think of all those treasures out there being ransacked by the Reapers. She could have been spending all this time preserving what was left of the galactic races. Now, they're likely all gone! Good thing she'd gotten hold of Kohi before all hell had broken lose.

So yes, loyalty to Shepard saw her joining the Alliance's Crucible Project, attaching herself, albeit resignedly, as their "technical expert." For a time, it suited her lifestyle. One day on the Crucible itself—diagnosing, hacking, decrypting—the next day out in the field—gathering needed tech, sometimes legally, sometimes not. It was all in a day's work. And, for a time, she enjoyed it. Until the final showdown on Earth, that is.

The day all Crucible personnel were transferred to the Alliance Fifth Fleet's dreadnaught, the Xavier, had been a decisive day for Kasumi. It had meant their work was complete. The battle for the galaxy had begun. But another war, another battle for supremacy began in Kasumi's mind—whether to stay and fight for Shepard's cause or fight for her own. Not that she had any other cause, other than a life of thievery (her last true mission had been to retrieve Keiji's graybox from Donovan Hock, and helping Shepard defeat the Collectors). How many times had she made her way cloaked to the docking bay only to turn around and head back to her quarters? She lost count. Guilt and an overwhelming sense of how terribly disappointed Shepard would be in her always turned her around.

It helped to have a friend (an abstract idea for most of Kasumi's life; the only people she had ever counted among them had been her grandmother, Keiji, and Shepard), someone one could turn to when lost. However, Kasumi never thought to gain a friend among the Crucible Project's staff until she met one Brynn Cole. Funny how life has it little twists and turns. The woman of the very man Kasumi had lusted over when she was a Normandy crewmember. Jacob Taylor—one of the finest specimens of the human male she had ever laid eyes upon (save, of course, for Keiji Okuda; no one could top him). Sad to say, Jacob no more had eyes for her than he might have for Grunt hiding in his alcove on the Normandy near engineering. Brynn could not say the same. Knocked-up and happy, she was, and Kasumi couldn't condemn her for it. A man like Jacob Taylor couldn't deserve better than Brynn Cole.

After all was said and done—the Reapers defeated, the galaxy safe once again, and Kasumi herself lost in space, as it were, for the first time in her life—Brynn was the only one she could honestly confess to. Not about her life, or her lust for the father of Brynn's unborn child (ugh, that was the worst news a lonely and fertile woman could ever hear!). No, certainly not about that! The confession had to do with what she'd seen…and overheard.

Stuck on board the Xavier after being set adrift out into space, Kasumi had taken to cloaking about the ship. The higher-ups, the ones with titles like captain or major or admiral, weren't filtering enough information down to the lowlies like herself and Brynn. Kasumi had grown tired of being in the dark…in terms of intelligence, that was. So, she snuck about the ship, flitting from engineering, to the officers' lounge, to the bridge. Imagine her surprise when she discovered that not only had they defeated their enemy, but the Reapers left behind one final gift—the ultimate destruction of all mass relays, effectively setting their quarry adrift in space.

She'd never really known how to take Admiral Hackett. He seemed a stuffy old bird, full of brimstone, but lacking the fire. But she understood him well. He was an officer, first and foremost. A man of conviction, and a soldier of honor. She also understood the need to keep certain information under wraps. What good would it do to let everyone know the mass relays were severely damaged and unusable, perhaps for years, and the fact of their being stranded in the Arcturus system with no easy way to get home? Good soldiers separated from their loved ones, their families, asari separated from their sisters and bondmates, krogan separated from their clans, not to mention that hanar out of water for too long a period was a bad thing no matter how you looked at it.

Brynn had been heartbroken. With child and no way to know if she would ever see Jacob again. Kasumi felt her pain, and thus she was the only one she told. These were troubles best kept from the majority of people, at least until a ship-wide announcement could be made. And when they did, Kasumi felt sure not every detail would be revealed, such details as Kasumi was witness to as she hid cloaked in the corner, rather like a fly on the wall. Details about dead geth, a crippled Citadel, and a blipping signal that begged for someone to answer it.

The signal had been kept mostly hush-hush among even some of the higher-ups. They didn't know what to do about it. The weight of its meaning seemed to rest heavily upon the admiral's shoulders. Kasumi saw it in the slump of those shoulders and in the lowering of the head attached to them every time he looked at it. It's what piqued Kasumi's interest, the same as might armed guards outside a locked door; it made her want to investigate...and almost wished she hadn't. If Alliance military types hadn't surrounded her, she might have let out a small cry. The last time she'd ever felt this helpless, Keiji had lay dying in her arms.

Strict self-discipline and the hacking techniques of one renowned thief did the trick, perhaps a little too well. She now knew more than she wanted to know—about the Normandy, about the Citadel, but worse was knowing that the blip, which everyone seemed so concerned about and yet avoided like the elephant in the room, was Commander Shepard. Her vitals played out a signal to no one. She was alive, alone and isolated. No one else knew she was there upon the Citadel, and based upon the information her omni-tool had gathered, Kasumi's former commander was in deplorable condition. Yes, Cerberus had rebuilt her from the ground up. They had pieced her together from organic and inorganic material. She was the Six Trillion Dollar Woman, which in old-time television monologue tropes meant she was "better…stronger…faster," but which, in reality, meant Shepard had survived an event that would have killed anyone else.

Barely survived might have been a better assessment. Kasumi had gone away with the information, her heart unsure if it had rent in two or elevated to a higher level of enlightenment. It's what found her in her quarters, seeking direction from a centuries-old diamond. Like the Koh-i-Noor, Shepard had found herself in the hands of many a ruler, set on a pedestal, revered, worshipped even in some circles. Impossible to know the final outcome. Kasumi knew only the results of Shepard's final decision, but she could surmise that at the very end of it all, Shepard made the only decision she could have made; not that of the Illusive Man or even of the Alliance. She stepped away from her ruler in a way Kohi never could. She became the galaxy's savior. And Kasumi's as well, for she now had a new mission. She was already thinking, planning, cloaking, plotting.

Kasumi navigated the wide open corridors of the Xavier, hiding in plain sight near entrances to parts of the dreadnaught that required special security clearance until someone came along that she could shuffle in behind. Eventually, she got as close to communications as sneaking would get her, and where hacking this deep into an Alliance war ship would prove to be a fruitless shot in the foot. Time for a more covert approach.

Standing outside of communications and waiting for the inevitable moment when someone would sense her presence (being invisible had its advantages, but it was sometimes impossible to remain absolutely silent; even thieves get growly tummies from time to time), Kasumi took the opportunity a drowsy guard gave her. When his chin came to rest upon his collarbone, she dropped to a quick yet stealthy crouch at the opening of an air vent. She removed the grate, slid in feet first and returned the grate to its place before the guard even realized what had happened, coming back to consciousness with a snort as the grate snapped into place.

 _Easy peasy._

Navigating the airshaft proved more difficult than navigating open corridors, but Kasumi liked to think she did it with panache. A shame no one ever had the opportunity to watch her work but herself. She had gotten herself into smaller spaces than this and lived to make off with thousands of credits worth of goodies. She sometimes imagined what it would be like to be a walking goddess, like Miranda, with legs as tall as sequoias, but it was times like this when she absolutely loved being a small and yet not-so-ordinary Japanese woman.

Airshafts in a warship always proved difficult to navigate. Kasumi would know. She'd traversed enough of them in her time. Military secrets were a scintillating commodity, and she had to admit, moving surreptitiously through the bowels of a military vessel intent upon thievery was exquisitely seductive. The thrill of stratagem coupled with the fear of discovery. It pulsed the blood through her veins like no other…well, almost no other. A flash of dark skin crossed her mind, full lips, ripped chest, belly flat as a washboard covered with kinky spirals of hair. Kasumi bit her bottom lip, repressing her tantalized grin. Oh, Brynn would absolutely hate her if she knew.

There wasn't much room for movement within these thin, horizontal airshafts. She'd gone in feet first since turning around and facing forward wasn't an option. She moved snakelike through the shaft, undulating, shifting her hips, working with her heals and hands. Though awkward, the journey didn't prove particularly difficult as she hadn't far to go. The shaft led to a minutely wider vertical one. Kasumi squeezed herself into a fetal position, orienting her lithe body until it fit perfectly beneath the opening of the vertical shaft. She then shifted to her knees and stood to her full height, 5'5" to be exact.

Here was the hard part. How to navigate a vertical shaft that offered no means of ascent, no ladder, no rope. Here was the harder part. How to do so without making a sound.

The ledge of a continuing horizontal shaft peeked down above her at a height higher than she was tall. Within these confines, and in this shifty light, it would be impossible to fix an accurate height, but Kasumi held no doubts as to her abilities. Leaning her back against the shaft's flat metallic wall, she affixed the palms of her gloved hands to the two sidewalls and the pads of her soft boots to the one opposite. Hands first, she pulled herself up, using her back as leverage and feet as anchors.

People sometimes asked, and even Shepard had once asked, why she never took off her gloves. Oh, if they could see her now, they might just have their questions answered. These were no ordinary gloves, nor was she an ordinary woman. Being related to Jackie Chan didn't hurt much either.

Kasumi smiled. _Not really. He's Chinese, silly! Fooled you._

She had reached the top. Here was the hardest part. How to grab hold of the horizontal ledge without losing her grip on the wall and plummeting the ten or twelve feet back to the bottom.

Kasumi shuffled her fingers, walking them like sidewinder snakes along the surface of the wall, slowly pulling her upper body toward the shaft's opening. The drawback was that she lost her leverage the farther she moved away from the wall. The only part of her now holding her body in place was her derriere. She would have to be quick, for a mistake now would be costly.

In rapid succession, leverage shifted from butt to knees and then to the pads of her feet. These were no ordinary boots, either. For a thief, hard rubber soles were not an option. They were noisy, cumbersome. Her boots shaped to the soles of her feet and were equipped with a gripping ability not unlike the feet of a gecko. Kasumi couldn't climb walls. She wasn't a husk, and she was no more related to Spiderman than she was Jackie Chan, but her boots gave her an edge not many could claim.

With her boots now claiming leverage as well, Kasumi was able to slip her head and upper torso into the horizontal airshaft and use her gloved hands to pull herself the rest of the way in. A tricky maneuver, but one Kasumi was sure she pulled off with another ounce of panache.

Now head first, she slid effortlessly through the shaft, making turns here and there, peering down through one grate after another and into one room after another. Curving herself along a left hand turn, Kasumi stared down a grate and into the room she sought—communications—lit only with consoles and flickering holographic screens. Was it was the hellish red-orange glow of the room that made her apprehensive, or the lack of any attending personnel? Three chairs and every single one of them sat empty.

 _Hmmm,_ she thought. _Great luck, or a trap?_

She thought of that signal blipping silently somewhere on the bridge of the Xavier and decided, either way, the risk of discovery was worth it. With careful precision, and with the right tool, she lifted the grate from its moorings, slipped it onto her back to keep it from scraping the walls, and slid over the opening. On her belly, Kasumi slid backward, letting her feet and calves through first. It took a stealthy bit of maneuvering, and balancing of the grate from her back to between her shoulder blades to the back of her neck, for Kasumi to move her derriere through the opening. Before moving the rest of the way through, she carefully moved the grate to the top of her head, her hands doing the leveraging this time on either side of the opening. Her body through, arms extended, the only thing left inside the shaft were her fingers. Kasumi released one set, let the grate fall into place, then released the other. She landed upon the floor of the communications room at a quiet crouch.

She didn't move right away. She stayed silent, her eyes focused on nothing, but her ears open for any sound. A slight shift of movement, voices on the other side of the door, the electronic whir of an automated camera. Nothing came.

Kasumi stood. She had only to take one step toward the console. There wasn't even any need to sit. Her omni-tool could do the legwork. She brought up her left arm as though she were about to check the time when the clearing of a throat froze her as solid as Michelangelo's bronze statue of David…though, with a bit more clothes.

First mistake—always look behind you. With a sigh, Kasumi decloaked and turned her hooded head. Sitting in a chair in a dark corner of the room, fingers tented before a scarred face, sat Admiral Hackett, his long legs crossed in front of him.

Kasumi couldn't help but flashing him one of her approving grins. "Oh, you're good, Admiral."

"As are you, Miss Goto," Hackett replied.

"No wonder Shepard had such a high opinion of you. Or should I say _has_?"

His brows drew together. "What are you up to, Miss Goto?"

"Nothing terribly treasonous. Just trying to get an old friend out of a bind."

"You mean Shepard."

Kasumi got back to work. Her arm had never dropped, and now she triggered her omni-tool, brought it to life. "Us girls have to stick up for one another. The man rarely does." She paused with a glance back at the admiral. "There are a few exceptions, but they only come around one or twice in a lifetime."

Hackett sat up, elbows on his knees. "If you're thinking of contacting the Normandy, don't bother. They can't save her anymore than we can."

"If you're thinking I don't already know about the Normandy's situation, you're sadly mistaken."

"I know you know, Miss Goto."

Kasumi, ill prepared to discover she wasn't the only stealthy one on board the Xavier, paused and frowned at the admiral.

"I've been in this business for a long time now." Hackett got to his feet. "Military life is the only life I've ever really known. I know when I'm being watched."

Kasumi looked away, a tinge embarrassed. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, I wasn't watching you exactly. I was looking for information."

"No doubt you got what you were looking for, or else you wouldn't be here."

Miffed, Kasumi dropped her arm. "And _no doubt_ you've been tracking me this whole time. Where is it?"

The admiral pointed to her hood. _No,_ Kasumi thought and began a thorough search of every snap and seam. There was no worse time in a thief's life than to discover she had been duped. As stealthy as one was, it was always a prick to the ego to find someone stealthier than oneself. Thank goodness for her hood (though, at the moment, she also damned it), for it hid the color that rose on her cheeks. Seconds into Kasumi's search, her fingers brushed over a slight bump just under the lining near her shoulder blade. There was no controlling the gasp that escaped her.

This wasn't just any bug. This one had been planted, and a first-rate plant always comes in the form of a friend. Any good thief knows when, and when not, to form attachments, but an exceptional thief goes to great pains to avoid even physical contact, particularly with individuals who haven't risen to a certain level of trust. Attachments were tricky things. It was okay to develop a crush on a fellow crewmember. It was equally okay to fangirl over your favorite commander. But it was never okay to trust implicitly someone you'd only known for a few weeks. The Reaper war had weakened Kasumi's convictions.

"Don't be too hard on Miss Cole," Hackett said, reading the conclusion Kasumi had come to. "She was worried you'd do something rash."

Being duped by the admiral was one thing. Kasumi saw it as an honor. Being deceived by Brynn was a whole other animal. She grit her teeth and forced a smile. "Like trying to contact the Normandy to let them know Shepard is still alive?"

"No, but I applaud your reticence. You could have lit up the entire galaxy with what you know, but you didn't. Why?" The curiosity in those baby blues was as radiant as the sun.

"Information is power, Admiral."

"You seek power? Funny, I always saw you as one who sought _things_."

"The only power I seek is the power to save Shepard's life. Why have you done nothing?"

"What would you have me do?"

"Something. _Anything._ Contact the Citadel."

"The Citadel is dead, Miss Goto. It's stopped spinning and the only thing keeping it moving is the Earth's gravitational pull. At its current rate of deceleration, it will fall into the Earth and everyone still alive on it will die."

If the admiral had taken a needle and injected molten lead into her chest cavity, Kasumi's heart couldn't have felt heavier. "Boy, you sure know how to sucker punch a girl."

"I'm sorry, Miss Goto, but the truth is the truth." He turned away, hands clasped behind his back. The consummate military man. "Death has invaded every corner of the galaxy, and He's taking prisoners in droves. Millions have died on Palaven and Thessia. God only knows how many we've lost on Earth. And in the final battle for the Crucible…I try not to think how many good people we left behind to die in the shockwave, or how many of them might still be alive, right this very second, struggling to take their last breath. If Shepard is the only one I know of, then I guess I can rest easy tonight. She knew the risks. We all did."

"Bullshit."

Admiral Hackett half turned and met the thief with a raised eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

Kasumi typically wasn't fond of harsh language. She rarely used it, preferring to season her words with cheeky cynicism instead. But every so often, someone dropped a load that could only be described in an expletive.

"I'll see your bullshit, Admiral, and raise you my interpretation. I knew the risks, too, when I joined Shepard in her fight against the Collectors. Every single one of us _dirty hoodlums_ stood a chance of ending up just another popsicle the Collectors could melt down into goo. But one truth we all knew at the end when we stood on the threshold of the Omega-4 rely—if anything had happened to us, Shepard would have exhausted every effort to save us. I know that not as a soldier, but as her friend."

Defiant hands on her hips, Kasumi stared down the admiral, expecting anger or doubt, and got neither. Instead, she saw a cool understanding, a sort of fatherly-like assessment of her words. That's when it all tumbled together in her head. He knew she would come. He'd been waiting, not to stop her or even to arrest her (if that had been the circumstances, a chase through the Xavier would have been on), but to evaluate her, to gauge her resolve. She suddenly felt like a kid in school, and she hadn't felt that way in a long, long time.

Still, she refused to lay down her shield of defiance. "If you can rest easy knowing the woman who saved your ass is out there dying, then leave her rescue to those who have the means and the gumption to do so."

Hackett could call in the guard at any moment. He could also have alerted security to a dangerous and potential threat to Alliance interests long ago, but he hadn't. He'd given Kasumi the benefit of the doubt and found her more than capable.

He gave her a sideways glance. "What do you intend to do?"

"Let me worry about that," Kasumi answered with a smile. "All I need is access."

Seconds passed in which the admiral contemplated whether it was wise to give his ship's systems over to a self-admitted kleptomaniac, a woman who still held possession of the Mona Lisa somewhere in a vault on a planet she'd never name. And then he nodded. It was quick, barely perceptible, and would never be repeated, but it had happened.

"Leave a light footprint," he said. "We're still unsure how friendly the skies are."

Of this, Kasumi was as unsure as Hackett, but she also heard the warning he did not give. The one that would mean his rank if her meddling in Alliance communication systems ever came to light.

"A light footprint? Admiral," Kasumi playfully chastised, "you underestimate my abilities. I won't even disturb the ground. Trust me."

A hint of a smile played across the admiral's lips, pulling at the scar that sliced across both. Kasumi imagined a snarling turian had given it to him during the First Contact War. She liked it; it imbued him with the fire she thought he lacked.

"You have one hour. Keep out of sight," he finished and turned for the door. Kasumi cloaked, waited as the door opened and closed behind his broad back, and listened as he informed his soldiers on the other side, "All communications, except for onboard, are now restricted. These doors have been sealed on my order until further notice."

A chorus of "yes sirs," and Kasumi allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief. Now was not the time to wallow in it, however. There was much to be done, and an hour was hardly enough time to do it all in. She'd just as soon take a seat. Planting her butt in one, she thought of something she'd once said to Shepard of her interest in a particular asari archaeologist.

" _I hear that Liara and you were an item. It must be hard for you to see her again after so long. She seemed so…cold and focused."_

True, that had been her initial impression, but then she didn't know Dr. T'Soni the way Shepard did. Her first response had been an indifferent shrug of the shoulders, but Kasumi knew better. And then Shepard had said, _"Maybe. Maybe she is cold and focused now, but that's not the Liara I knew two years ago. I have to believe there's a wall there because of all she's been through, after all my pig-headedness has put her through. Two years is a long time to make everything right with a simple hello. The asari who fought with me on Virmire, and followed me all the way to certain death on the Citadel, that asari was full of hope and possibility. She reminds me a lot of you in that way."_

" _Me?"_ Kasumi had asked.

" _Yeah,"_ Shepard had said with a smile. _"Liara always saw the good in others, even in her mother, when her all her goodness had been Swiss cheesed out of her by Saren. You're like that, Kasumi."_

" _Well…I try."_

" _If there's hope for the best thief in the galaxy, there's hope for Liara."_

One thing Shep always had, even at the darkest of hours, was hope. Kasumi tried to fill herself with that same ambition and reached out into the galaxy, over a long distance of stars and planets, moons, comets and asteroids, to find the Normandy, and to find the one in whom Shepard placed all her hope—Liara T'Soni.

* * *

 **I think had the most fun writing this chapter, embodying Kasumi Goto. It was a blast. Hope you liked it.**

 **Fact: I could find nothing online that references the name of the dreadnaught used in escorting the Crucible to Earth. The name I used, the Xavier, was inspired by one Charles Xavier, of _XMen_ fame. I had been watching the prequels at the time of this writing.**


	10. We're ONE

**MASS EFFECT: ONE**

* * *

"You're not in this fight alone."

~Commander Shepard~

* * *

 **We're ONE**

 **Zakera Ward – Before Endgame**

 **" _I_** knew it! I knew it! Nobody would listen to me. Not C-Sec, not the Council, but _I_ knew it."

"Would you shut up already," the volus hissed to the salarian beside him, after an intake of breathable air from his pressure suit. He had a very bad feeling that pretty soon the air wouldn't be breathable for anyone on the Citadel, let alone the volus or quarians.

Still, he wasn't looking to die any sooner. They might still have a chance. He and the salarian had found a nice, safe place to hide, in an upper level service corridor far away from the chaos outside. People rarely ever came up here, evidenced by crates stacked one on top of the other. They had found a place on the floor behind them, the crates too heavy for them to move and form a blockade. It would have to do, at least until things died down (died, what a terrible word to use), or until the Reapers decided to move on.

But those horrible creatures out there weren't going to go anywhere as long _he_ ran his mouth. Bopping the salarian on the arm, he whispered, "Are you trying to draw every monster in our direction?"

"No, of course not, Jahleed," the salarian said with a shake of his spindly head. "I don't want to die anymore than you do, but as I've surmised, _you_ do not get the significance of what this means."

Jahleed had known the salarian for a long time, worked with him. They were colleagues. Chorban was his name; a salarian with skin darker than any he had ever known, except for a small white patch that seemed to grow from the base of his throat all the way to his chin. It ended just beneath his bottom lip in what looked like a row of sharp teeth. Others were sometimes intimidated by this (he, too, at one point), but Chorban was no more harmless than a pyjack. What he was, in fact, was a brilliant scientist. While other people were busy trying to find a cure to Kepral's Syndrome or the Genophage, he and Chorban had devised a way to learn more about the Citadel's keepers.

Ingenious little creatures, always moving about, taking care of the Citadel as if the other millions of lifeforms living within in it hardly existed. Yet, the keepers had lived and worked on the Citadel long before Jahleed's species learned to move upon the surface of Irune. It's what made them so worthy of he and Chorban's interest, particularly once Chorban discovered that the keepers were not a part of the Prothean Empire fifty thousand years ago, as was the common understanding for as long as Jahleed could remember, but that the keepers in fact pre-date the protheans. The implication of such a monumental discovery was staggering. It meant the races in their cycle—the asari primary among them—were not the first ones to find and utilize the Citadel. It meant the protheans were not its progenitors. Just as the asari had discovered the Citadel and used it to expanded their influence and control over the galaxy, so had the protheans. Someone else had built the Citadel. Someone else had placed it in a unique position within the galaxy. Someone with a purpose.

He and Chorban had, over the last couple of years, painstakingly gathered this information by means of a special device which Chorban himself had made. Well, he hadn't actually invented the device they used to scan the keepers. It was someone else's medical invention. He and Chorban had merely liberated the company of it, found a way to modify it and make it work for their needs. They hadn't done this by any legal means, of course. Retribution for their actions would have been swift and potentially painful were it not for Commander Shepard. She had bought them time, and helped them out. The information Chorban had been able to acquire from the keepers boasted surprising revelations. Surely, this is what Chorban was going on about. Didn't mean Jahleed was willing to die to hear it.

He bopped the salarian once more on the arm to quiet him, and to chastise him. Chorban always talked down to him as if he were a lesser scientist. Despite his misgivings, and his fear of seeing again what he'd see a few moments ago, he was curious what Chorban meant.

"What _what_ means?" Jahleed asked after expelling a hiss of processed air from his suit.

Chorban hit the back of his head against the wall and rolled his large eyes. "The fact that no one listened to my warnings. That Bailey in C-Sec just shook his head when I told him about the keepers, that they had been bio-engineered millions of years _before_ the protheans…bio-engineered by the Reapers themselves! Of course, at the time, I knew little of the Reapers, but that doesn't matter. Even those reporters, al-Jalani and Wong, refused to release the information I'd gathered about the signal the keepers were scheduled to respond to every fifty thousand years. How could they have been so stupid?"

"You tried, Chorban. It was all you could do."

Chorban went on as if Jahleed hadn't even spoken. "Sure, maybe I didn't have all the facts, but I knew enough. They should have listened to me. Now, Wong is dead and al-Jalani's red brains have been splattered all over the Silversun Strip, who knows what may have happened to Bailey or even Shepard…and even worse than that, the Reapers are here, Jahleed, on the Citadel, just as I had predicted. Don't you understand what that means? We can run, we can hide, but none of it will make a difference. We are all going to die!"

"Don't be so fatalistic, Chorban."

An explosion sounded in the distance, shaking the floor they sat upon. Both of them flinched.

"Fatalistic?" Chorban eventually asked, his voice low. "I don't know about you, but I haven't forgotten what that thing did to Marvek!"

Marvek had been what Chorban liked to called his "bodyguard." Jahleed had always thought of him as a grunt or a lackey. He did Chorban's bidding, whatever he asked. Now, he did nothing. He was dead. Ripped to shreds by a couple of monsters, that someone else had called "husks", so that he and Chorban could get away. Though he was grateful, Jahleed found it hard to think of Marvek's move as a sacrifice; just a dumb decision which had gotten him killed.

Jahleed huffed the only way a volus could in a non-ammonia-based atmosphere. Huddled here behind their easily penetrable barrier, he found he couldn't raise a voice in further protest. They were no different from children hiding from their parents. The only difference was that when these parents came in search of them, it would not be to administer correction, but eradication.

Jahleed nodded and his pressure suit helmet nodded with him. "You are right, Chorban."

"Of course, I am." Chorban crossed his arms over his scant chest.

"But should we really sit here and wait for death to come to us?"

The salarian's eyes narrowed. "Do you expect me to go in search of it?"

"No, but there has to be something we can do."

"Like what? We're scientists, not soldiers. I have some weapons training. I might make it for a while, but not for long; _and you_ , you couldn't run even if someone gave you a biotic boost. You're only alive because of Marv—"

A scream pierced the air, close by, somewhere below them. It shut Chorban up as quick as a kick to the midsection. Jahleed couldn't be sure, but it sounded like that of a child. Inside his suit, his eyes (a number of oculars unknown to anyone but the volus) snapped closed, and he grimaced. He thought he was going to be sick. That was never a good idea, but it was especially worse in a pressure suit.

 _Children,_ he thought. _Not children._

There was the explosion of a shotgun. Chorban drew his hands over the holes on either side of his head that were his ears. The blast and the scream came from a lower level, but it was close enough to send a slight tremor through the floor.

Jahleed was not so lucky in his movements as Chorban. He could not cover his ears, nor could he draw his knees up to his head and bury his face as though it might shut out the world and what was happening in it. He couldn't even express his fears as Chorban could, with squeezed-shut eyes and clenching fingers. All he could do was talk, but his words would bring little comfort to their situation. That did not stop Chorban, however. He blithered a string of incoherent words. It took a minute for Jahleed's suit to decipher that his friend was repeating over and over: "I don't want to die. I don't want to die."

An opening door silenced him.

This area of the Citadel, a level above the shops and pubs, serviceable by a number of catwalks and storage rooms, was rarely used. The owners of the shops below kept some of their supplies here in the stockrooms, and C-Sec officers used the catwalks for surveillance. Jahleed knew. He had run into several officers, as well as a couple of stock boys, in the years he and Chorban had been in search of keepers to document. It wasn't a secret place. Everyone knew about the catwalks and the stockrooms. That wasn't the problem.

Over the last six months, Chorban had further modified the device to access hard to reach places on the Citadel. This was an easy modification, considering how closely linked the keepers were connected to the Citadel. It had just not dawned on him until recently how easy it would be. With his device, they were able to access keeper tunnels deep within the bowels of the station. Jahleed did most of the tunnel reconnaissance because of his stature. (He still thought Chorban more capable of such tunnel digging than himself. Chorban might be taller, but he wasn't as big around.) They would never attempt to gain access to high security places, like the Council chambers or C-Sec itself, but they could surreptitiously poke about in the tunnels beneath or above them. Only for gaining more insight into the keepers, though. If they learned a bit more about the Citadel in the process, that was merely a bonus.

When they had run in here, Marvek's screams still ringing in their ears, Chorban had used his device to lock both the entrance and the exit doors of the stockroom. To hear one of them opening on the far side of the room, chilled them both to the bone (though, whether volus had bones and not cartilage was still up for debate). They heard a shuffle of feet as the door swished closed behind whatever had entered. Jahleed chanced a look at his friend and colleague. Chorban was quiet now, but his whole body had begun to shake. If his wide, iridescent eyes got any wider, they would be bigger than his whole head. Again, as scared as he was, Chorban had it good. At least he could breathe. He didn't have to hold his breath in order to keep from hissing an expulsion of used air loud enough to draw the attention of whatever had entered the stockroom with them.

Suffocating himself proved to be for naught, however. The shuffling feet drew closer. Take that back. They didn't shuffle as much as they click-clacked like little kids with tapping shoes. Maybe the luxury of closing ones ears off to sound wasn't as much of one as Jahleed at first thought. The sound was familiar, comforting even. He'd heard it enough in the last several years to know it by heart. If he could have smiled, he would have.

Invisible hands lifted a top-stacked crate and set it aside. Chorban gave an audible cry, fear blinding him to a sound he already had memorized. But Jahleed knew. He had deduced the identity of their guest long before it picked up the crate.

Chorban gasped. "A keeper." The words, whispered shakily with the residue fear, held a worshipful tone.

"I knew it all along."

"You knew nothing of the sort, Jahleed."

He could have argued the point, but Jahleed didn't see the need. For now, they were still safe. It was all that mattered. The keeper, however, wasn't concerned with their presence one way or another. It had a job to do. Whatever that job was, as they piddled at their stations, neither he nor Chorban knew.

"What is it doing?" Jahleed asked, watching as it continued to move their barricade, crate at a time, as if they weighed no more than children's toys.

Jahleed didn't see it, but Chorban shook his head. Three crates set to the side, the keeper set a final to the floor (fully revealing their hiding place and their cowardliness), and moved passed them as if they weren't even there. The click-clack had been the sound of its hard toes making contact with a metallic floor. It held its scarablike and globose body upon four spindly legs. Three toes there were per foot, giving it added balance. Four arms with three-fingered hands also gave it greater dexterity in its work. And upon its shoulders was a long and flexible neck from which hung a small head sporting two protruding black eyes. It had a mouth and pointy mandibles jutting from either side, but no one had ever seen it eat, let alone heard it speak. Keepers were both endlessly fascinating and unutterably creepy all at the same time. Sometimes, Jahleed had wondered how he continued to work around them.

They were no less creepy on this day while Reapers invaded and overwhelmed the Citadel. The things seemed not to care. They went about their regular duties as if this were any other day. It click-clacked passed them and, with its four hands, removed a bulkhead. Setting the heavy piece aside as it had with the crates, it began working on something behind it. Jahleed could make no sense of it. What it was doing must be important enough to continue despite the people that were dying out in the streets. He wondered how many dead bodies it passed to make its way here uninterrupted.

"Do you think it's helping the Reapers?" Jahleed asked, but Chorban didn't readily answer. His head was turned away, his eyes upon the keeper. What could possibly be going through the salarian's mind?

As Jahleed watched, the fear seemed to wash away from Chorban, as though he were sitting beneath a shower of confidence. His hunched back straightened, his hands went frantically to work on his omni-tool, and he rose to his knees.

"I don't think so," he said.

The device, which was tuned into his omni-tool, activated and he began actively scanning the keeper.

"It's just working," Chorban continued. "Doing what it normally does to assist the Citadel and keep it functioning. It's probably making repairs even as the Reapers' minions damage the station."

"What if it's communicating with them? What if it tells them where we are?"

"Don't be dense, Jahleed. You know we've never found any definitive proof that the keepers communicate with anything. They respond only…to signals or to stimuli from outside sources, like the station itself."

Jahleed knew that to be true. He had made a nearly unheard of mistake some months ago. Deep in a keeper tunnel, somewhere between Heurta Memorial and the docking bay. He'd been scanning a keeper, constantly probing, pushing the envelope as he'd heard some humans say. He pushed a little too far. Chorban had once told him what would happen if one attempted to corner or detain a keeper, but he had never seen it before. He hadn't meant to alarm it. He just didn't want it to go just then. He'd been close to a breakthrough, close to discovering how the Citadel communicated with the keeper. He thought it might have something to do with its antennaed backpack, so he had grabbed one of its arms…and within seconds, it melted into a gelatinous puddle of proteins and minerals. The sight had scared him so badly he wouldn't go into the tunnels for weeks after that. He could never have told Chorban what happened, no matter how confused he'd been about Jahleed's fear of returning to the tunnels. Wild kakliosaurs couldn't have driven that tale from him.

Chorban gasped suddenly, making Jahleed worry that somehow the salarian had read his thoughts, but no. There was something else on his mind. He turned to Jahleed with wide eyes, and Jahleed could almost see the "light bulb" idea turn on above his head, right between his horns.

"I have an idea."

"Really?"

"Quick! Help me."

Chorban got to his feet and jogged a few paces to the crates the keeper had set aside. The one he selected was nearly as tall as the salarian himself, shoulder high. He removed a lid, setting it quietly to the floor and began removing packages from within.

With heavily expelled air, Jahleed scrambled to his suited feet as fast as he could. Instead of helping, he watched Chorban pulling what looked like freeze-dried meal packages for the shop below them. "What in the name of Plenix are you doing? Making dinner?"

The salarian turned to him with narrowed eyes. "Didn't you want to do something other than wait for death to find us?"

The volus nodded his helmet.

"Then, get over here and help me empty this crate before the keeper finishes his job and moves on."

 **EEE**

 _ **W**_ hat an ingenious idea! Chorban really was the thinking side of their two-man group. They would use the crate, upended, as a shield, riding on the inside, and move about the Citadel practically unnoticed. If they happened to become stuck in the middle of a gunfight, well, crates nowadays were built to withstand just about anything. It could probably take more of a beating than a security shuttle. Turning the crate over hadn't been so easy. Salarians weren't known for their great strength, and Jahleed was little more than a ball with nubby protuberances, but they had accomplished the task with little noise. Now, they were making their way along the catwalk, turtlelike. Chorban, hunched over with his palms holding up the crate, and Jahleed, walking tall, they followed the keeper to its next duty. (If anyone made for a safe companion during a Reaper invasion, it was a keeper. The two seemed to pay little mind to each other.) Any sound, far off cry or pops of gunfire, and they would set the crate down and huddle until the coast was clear. Perfectly safe…

Until they could make a break for a keeper tunnel. From there, Jahleed surmised they would make their way slowly to the docks and hopefully find a ship on which they could escape. He hadn't the slightest idea how to pilot a shuttle, let alone a spacecraft, and he was pretty sure Chorban didn't either, but hey, it probably had an autopilot. No sweat. For now, they would shuffle along.

Chorban set the crate down, breathing heavily. It was dark inside the crate save for the one beam of light drilled into the crate's forward facing side by Chorban's omni-toll. He needed something to see by, but it helped Jahleed little. He didn't know Chorban had stopped until he ran into him.

"You could _try_ to help," Chorban said.

"I would but you're holding it too high."

"Then hold it up from the sides."

"All right, I will try, but my arms are not very long."

Chorban issued a testy sigh, and suddenly, a bright orange light lit up their small space. An omni-tool. Not Jahleed's, of course, but it was comforting just the same. Chorban was making small notations onto his omni-tool and periodically looking out of the hole.

If Jahleed could have frowned, he would have. "Are you scanning the keeper?"

"Yes. Lower your voice."

He obeyed and continued at a whisper. " _Why_ are you scanning the keeper?"

"Remember your _almost_ breakthrough a couple of weeks ago?"

"Yes," Jahleed said warily.

"I've been analyzing what you found that day, and I've detected a pattern. Look," he said, and turned the omni-tool in Jahleed's direction. A vid screen as holographic as the omni-tool had popped up. He braced for a video of a putrefied keeper with himself standing there in a volus state of shock, which meant he would look no different than if he were reading a book. Instead, the omni-tool showed a graph measuring whatever Chorban had detected in a waveform. Daggerlike spikes jutted upward on the graph like deadly heartbeats, the kind that might kill you.

Jahleed resisted an urge to sigh in relief. "What is it?"

"I think it's a signal from the Citadel to the keepers...well, this one in particular."

"You mean, this is not my recording?"

"Of course not. I'm recording _this_ keeper, but I've recorded others since while I worked this theory."

Fear of discovery gone, Jahleed now felt an uneasy grumble in his stomach. "Why did you not tell me of this?"

"Because, I—"

"Because you want all the glory," Jahleed said, pointing an accusatory three-fingered prehensor at Chorban.

"No, no, you dimwitted volus. This is sensitive information. I didn't want to reveal my findings until I was absolutely sure. We can't let something like this get into the wrong hands." Chorban shook his oblong head. "Look, the point is, it's just a theory, one I hadn't intended to test until I was sure, but with all that's happening, now could be my only chance."

Jahleed expelled a frustrated puff of used air. "But what about your idea? I thought we were getting out of here."

" _This_ is my idea. Hijacking the crate was just part of it."

"Oh no," Jahleed said, trying but not accomplishing a facepalm. "If we don't get out of here, Chorban, we're going to die…just like you said!"

"Yes, but that was before I realized what an amazing opportunity—"

Another swish of opening doors cut him off and Chorban turned to look out of his peephole. "Hurry. The keeper is on the move." Chorban's palms were up and the crate was moving. Jahleed could do little else but follow.

Through the door the crate wobbled, the sensors picking up their presence where the keeper did not and keeping the door open until they passed through. Jahleed heard the swish of its closing behind them, but they did not continue. Chorban set the crate down. They weren't moving but another door was opening.

"What's—?" Jahleed began when Chorban's entire palm planted itself over his mouthpiece. There was a sound of heavy footsteps, unnatural grunts and mutterings above the crate, and Jahleed kept obediently quiet, holding his breath again, knowing one expelled hiss would give them away. The door behind them opened once more, the heavy footsteps, the grunts and mutterings disappearing behind it. It wasn't until Chorban dropped his hand that Jahleed felt it safe to breathe again.

Chorban, too, for that matter. He expelled a gasp at the same time and pulled in a healthy dose of fresh air into his lungs. "That was close. It was one of those things…you know, the big ones with the bumpy back and a gun for an arm."

"Do you think they tracked us here?"

"I don't know, but I think the keeper knew it was coming. You missed it, but it stopped outside the opposite door as if it knew what was on the other side."

Jahleed drew in another intake of air. That last breath-holding contest had been a tough one. "How is that even possible?"

"This is how." Chorban powered his omni-tool and another holographic vid showed another waveform. "The Citadel told it. If my theory is right, Jahleed, and so far it's shaping up to be, then I could actually control a keeper."

Jahleed could have asked another question, could have butted into his "theory" with one of his own that went something like 'you've got quite an imagination there, Chorban.' But he didn't. He let his silence be his answer, and unfortunately, since Jahleed's face was as unreadable as a rock, Chorban took it as curiosity.

"I could match the Citadel's frequency, send a simple command to a keeper and make it do whatever I want it to."

" _Theoretically."_

"Yes, of course, theoretically."

Jahleed snapped. He grabbed Chorban by the lapels. "Are you crazy? Were you not just here when that thing passed us by? There are Reaper forces everywhere. We don't have time to test theories."

"Maybe I am crazy." Chorban shrugged out of Jahleed's grasp. "Before, I was afraid of dying for nothing. All my life's work gone for someone else to discover fifty thousand years from now. Now, I have a purpose and I am not afraid to die to see it through."

"Well, I think you're nuts. I'm not willing to die for your theory."

"And just where do you think you're going to go?"

Jahleed lowered his head as far as his helmet would allow. Chorban was right. He wouldn't last ten seconds out there on his own.

"Okay, fine," he said. "What's your grand idea?"

Chorban wasn't one for smiling on a regular basis. He was always too busy working, too busy devising insane plans. But he smiled now. Perhaps that's what made his facial marking so intimidating to Jahleed. Thoughts of "mad scientist" came to mind.

"If I can control one keeper, then maybe I can control them all."

"To what end? Other than making yourself the coolest being to have ever roamed the galaxy," Jahleed said, rather depressed at the thought. He never came up with the good ideas. He thought Chorban's smile would grow wider at the comment, but instead it dropped like a rock.

"I can't be the first one to have discovered this. Some ancient prothean probably stumbled upon the same thing, but never had the chance to see it through. That cannot happen in this cycle. Imagine the possibility, Jahleed—even if we could control just a handful of keepers, perhaps we could turn the tide of this war. The Citadel is the Reapers' war machine, right? That's essentially what Commander Shepard claims. They used the Citadel as their entrance into our galaxy fifty thousand years ago to begin their systematic galaxy-wide genocide, but the protheans changed that. Yes! The protheans altered the signal the Citadel sends to the keepers to respond to the Reapers arrival. If the protheans could do it, then we can too. Only _we_ will alter the signal. We'll send a signal that makes the keepers repel the Reapers. The keeper can then use the Citadel to follow out those commands. We could probably end this attack!"

Out of all that Chorban said, Jahleed only heard one word. _"We?"_

"Of course, _we_. I always mean we, even when I'm saying me or I. We're a team. We're one."

Stumped, Jahleed didn't know where to put himself. It wasn't like he had much room to put himself anywhere. They were sort of stuck in a box, but still, he had never thought Chorban was capable of such thoughtfulness.

"Well, I—I didn't know that," Jahleed began, but changed his tact quickly. Better to make it look like this theory of Chorban's was what interested him. "Still, I don't see how changing a few keeper commands is going to put an end to the attack on the Citadel."

"That's why I have to prove my theory, Jahleed." Chorban peered through the eyehole. "The keeper is on the move."

Crate raised to Chorban's shoulder level, they began their difficult turtle-waddle behind the keeper once again. Jahleed was even more confused than ever, but maybe that had something to do with the fact that he was now on…what's that human saying?...on Cloud 6? Yes, that must be it. He was on Cloud 6. He didn't exactly know what it meant, but he surely felt as if he were floating on a cloud right now. One of the Presidium's manufactured clouds, to be exact. At this point, neither of them could get any higher than that. Being on Cloud 6 felt pretty good. _WE._ It was a good word, _WE._ Jahleed felt like he could sing it all night long. He had never been part of _WE_ before. He was part of a clan, yes, but even being in a clan was not the same as being a part of _WE. WE_ had a magical quality. Yes, _WE_ was awesome!

They were waddling upon another catwalk when soft voices reached them from the streets below. Chorban automatically settled the crate to the floor. The muffled sound of gunfire reached them and Chorban wheezed a frustrated breath.

"I can't see a damn thing!" He drilled another small hole on the side of the crate and peered; and seemingly as an afterthought, drilled one at Jahleed's eye level. "Can you see anything?"

Jahleed was feeling as giddy as a schoolgirl. For the first time in their working relationship, he felt important to Chorban. He pressed his prehensors together as best he could, considering they were curved like fingers for better grip, and peered through his little hole.

"Nothing." He hoped his tone didn't sound as giddy as he felt. _WE._

"Then, let's keep moving or we'll lose the—"

A screech like the cry of a thousand people dying at once tore through the confines of their makeshift shield. Jahleed had never heard anything like it. Not on his homeworld of Irune nor on any space station or planet he had ever visited. It was horrible. It was demonic. If it were possible for a volus to melt right out of his pressure suit, Jahleed would have.

The fear he had seen in Chorban before his scientific revelation, reignited, only this time another flame roared behind it. Chorban wasn't giving up on his work no matter what monsters might come their way. _He might change his tune once it begins to rip him to pieces_ , Jahleed surmised, but at least Chorban's lingering confidence was a boost to Jahleed's own...until the sight of the thing making that hideous noise on the street below them.

Hidden in their crate, they watched it lumber along with a tall and yet lithe woman's body. One might have mistaken it for something that used to be human, but its tentacled head gave away its asari inheritance. The similarities ended there, however. Breasts and belly garishly distended, as if impregnated with the Reapers' future children, its face was an empty skull, save for the obsidian eyes gleaming from within sunken sockets. It moved like an old man, careful with each footfall in case it should take a wrong step. Then, like a rocket, it shot forward in a blue streak of light, jumping two or three shops at a time. If it saw them, if it merely detected them on the catwalk above…

Like every other Reaper abomination, this one was on the hunt. Thankfully, he and Chorban weren't on its radar. Some other unlucky soul was. They watched until it was out of sight, its screeches dampening as it moved on.

"By all that is good and holy, what was that?" Chorban's voice had taken on a hushed quality, one that was both awed and irrevocably offended.

"I think it was asari…"

Chorban pulled away from the peephole, landing his butt on the floor. For a moment, Jahleed thought he looked utterly defeated, but that wasn't it. The sight had been an affront, by all means, but Chorban wasn't giving up (the idea of Chorban giving up again scared the life out of Jahleed). He was thinking. He was thinking deep.

"Do you think it was after someone?"

Jahleed nodded. "Most assuredly. It moved with purpose."

Chorban looked through the forward facing peephole and got quickly to his feet again. "Hurry. The keeper is on the move. I have another idea."

"What?"

"I have to test my theory first."

 **EEE**

 _ **M**_ ere minutes had passed. They had moved unnoticed into another storage room and Chorban was busily recording another burst of signal being transmitted to the keeper. A screech as hideous as the last one reached their ears. It wasn't as loud this time. The sound had to travel through walls, but it still had a way of shaking them to the core.

Jahleed had to speak or else the sound would drive him crazy. "What does it say?"

"I don't know," Chorban threw over his shoulder. "I don't speak Citadel."

"Then how do you intend to create your own signal?"

"Easy…or at least it should be. As long as I can match the frequency of this signal, I should be able to send a command as simple as 'open the door' and it will respond. If my calculations are correct, the keeper's hardware should transliterate my command into the language it understands, which may be something as simple as ones and zeros."

Another screech. Jahleed blinked. "What's to prevent your signal from crossing wires with the Citadel's?"

"A good question," Chorban said with a frown that meant he hadn't figured that part out yet. "And one that can only be answered with a test."

" _Now?"_

"There's no time for later," Chorban said and nodded with a confidence that seemed bigger than the Citadel itself to Jahleed. "Here goes nothing…"

"Oh, I hope it doesn't melt."

Jahleed watched over his friend's shoulder as he typed in the command. Several seconds passed. Chorban's finger hovered over the link that would send the signal straight to the keeper's hardware strapped to its back. Chorban pressed the tip of his finger to the holographic display.

Message sent.

 **EEE**

 _ **H**_ e had a dream once. A persistent dream. One that evolved as the years went by.

In it, he'd had a home on a garden world like Eden Prime or something. Only it wasn't Eden Prime. This had been his own planet. There had been lush jungles, white sand beaches and pinnacled mountains. Indigenous animals of all sorts roamed its surfaces and swam in its oceans.

He couldn't recall if he'd given it a name. One thing he'd learned over the last several years was that making a name wasn't all that important. It's what you did, and how you treated people, that's what mattered.

Anyway, the best part about the dream was his house. Nothing special. He didn't need much. It was the location that set it apart from all else. His house rested upon a sea of green grass. The blades moved with the wind, rolling and dipping as one. A gorgeous stretch of land that jutted out over one of his planet's many oceans. In this dream, he actually had a couple of houses—one in the mountains high up with the billy goats, one on high stilts way in the middle of the swamp where he could spend a couple of days fishing, another he stupidly lost in the sand dunes—but this one over the ocean was his favorite. There was a reason for that.

Inside, he had all the modern amenities with none of the fuss of modernity. He lived like the men during Earth's pioneer days hundreds of years ago, and yet he made toasted bread without a brick oven and an open fire. He sipped his wine off the back porch and watched the grass move with the wind, smelled the ocean air, listened to the seagulls, and he waited for the call of a soft voice, the feel of a soft hand on his shoulder. His dream always ended with him looking up at her beautiful face, her smiling down at him. She was beautiful in an off-the-shoulder cotton dress. The setting sun's rays silhouetted her slender body through the thin fabric, and her hair moved with the wind just as the grass did.

And he would think: _No more faking, no more imagining, no more candles framing pictures on the wall. She's really here and she's with me. This is our house._

He would stand up, look into her glistening eyes, lower his mouth to hers and…

Okay, so maybe at some point the persistent dream turned into a persistent fantasy, but his doctor had said it was the best way to combat anxiety. "Create a mental safe zone," he said, "a place where you feel relaxed, until the anxiety passes." That dream had always been his safe place; a dream that over the years had expanded and stretched into an elaborate mental fantasy instead of a mental safe zone. Yes, it was dumb, and sometimes even downright wrong. Conrad knew that without anybody having to tell him. Just like keeping pictures, tasteful or otherwise, of a certain person plastered to a wall surrounded by candles. Anybody with half an ounce of good sense would tell him he's off his noggin. Worse yet, everybody else would call him a stalker, and maybe even a pervert. But, they couldn't possibly understand. His fantasy was necessary. He needed it like most species needed to drink water to live. It was his place to escape to when real life got a little…terrifying.

Terrifying, like watching all your hard work go up in flames. His orphanage, for example, coined "Shepards," was meant to help the abandoned and lonely children scattered across the galaxy. He'd been one of them back in the day, and if it weren't for Shepard's shining example in his life, he would probably still be one of them. But he had watched on a closed-circuit vid as the Reapers destroyed his orphanage. The kids, thank God and thanks to every last dime he had saved up, made it out in time.

Not like the ones here on the Citadel.

Terrifying, like watching a school full of children and teachers be overrun with Reaper forces and knowing there was absolutely nothing he could do to save them. The screams of children had shot him back into his safe place so fast—standing on the back porch, glass of wine in hand, soft hand on his shoulder, soft wind in his hair—he couldn't remember much of what happened after that. All he knew was the sound of her voice in his ear. Shepard's voice.

 _You're okay, Conrad. Don't be afraid. Everything is going to be all right now._ Her fingers in his hair. _No one can hurt you. Do you know why? Because you're Conrad Verner._ Thumb rubbing the back of his neck. _Conrad, the soldier. Conrad, the should-have-been-second human Specter. Conrad, defender of the weak._ The thumb had begun to dig into his flesh. _Conrad, the former Cerberus agent. No one messes with Conrad Verner and lives to tell about it._

From behind her back, his imagined Shepard in her billowy cotton dress produced a shotgun. The breadth of it she slammed into his chest like a hammer. It pulled him from his safe place as surely as if Shepard had tied a rope around his neck and yanked. Next thing he knew, he was somewhere far from the school and there was a shotgun in his hand. Don't ask him how he got it. He wouldn't have been able to tell you. Maybe he pulled it off a dead officer, or maybe it came from an officer, done with trying to defend a people who were impossible to save. Maybe one of them had slapped the gun into his chest. Either way, that's how Conrad found himself with a shotgun in his hands. He'd never used one in his life. All the guns he'd ever carried around were just props. This one had been as real as the death he saw all around him.

Bodies everywhere. Different shapes. Different sizes. Different colors. All races…and some of them were children. He could remember feeling suddenly cold and hot at the same time. His whole body began to tingle. The blood in his brain must have dropped to his feet, because his head felt light, like a balloon. He'd easily slipped right back into his safe place—the quiet of the ocean surf, the cool breeze, the soft hand. He looked up hoping to see soft eyes and saw nothing but a sneer and a fast approaching fist.

 _Get back out there,_ he thought he'd heard before the fist met his nose. His head had rocked back and hit a wall. He was fully in the now at that point, and there was no going back to the safe place. His Shepard wouldn't let him back in. He'd heard the bolt slide into the lock.

That's when he heard the scream of a child, and just like the dog he used to have when he was kid (Soldier he had called him) whose hackles would raise when he got angry, Conrad felt something awaken in him he didn't think he ever had. He didn't even know what to call it. Bravery or insanity? All he knew was that he had stepped out of his hiding place, shotgun in hand, and saw a woman running with a little girl in her arms. A husk was tight on their tails and within scratching distance. He screamed, they moved and he shot.

It was like Shepard had stepped into his skin and taken over. An intoxicating feeling, if he must say so. Though he would no more tell Shepard that than he would tell her of his little fantasy. He had saved them. He, him, Conrad Verner had save two people. A mother and her daughter. Got them right into safety's arms. But where did he now find himself?

Terrified, like giving yourself into the hands of death in order to see someone else to safety. He had no idea death could move so gracefully, and with such unhurried assurance. It held no doubts it would take his life as surely as Conrad had saved two. No more need for death to streak toward him. It was but steps away. It's pointed fingers like daggers reached for him. Its death cry pierced his eardrums. Conrad beat on the fantasy door. He begged to be let in. He wanted to feel the grass swaying at his ankles. He wanted the taste of wine on his tongue. He wanted her hands on his shoulder, her voice in his ear. He wanted… _needed_ to be let in, but the way was still locked.

 _Fight, Conrad!_ he heard from the other side of the door. _Don't give up! Fight! You can do it! I know you can, so DO IT!_

Conrad turned from his fantasy's door. He raised his shotgun. Death screamed, he screamed and he shot.

 **EEE**

 _ **C** lick-clack. Click-clack._

The keeper moved toward the door. Instead of opening it, the keeper stopped. Its four hands went busily to work on a panel near the door. It came away easily. The keeper set it aside as it had the one before and set its hands again to work on the conduits and wiring within. Tubes came apart, wires were cut and others spliced together. In a matter of seconds, the room went dark.

"Um," came a cautious volus's voice. "I don't think it worked, Chorban."

In the plunging darkness, Jahleed could not have seen the smile spread upon Chorban's face. This was good, for he might have found the smile a tad uneasy on his system. As much as he appreciated Chorban including him in so much of their work in the last several minutes, he continued to find him intimidating. Safer to hear it from his voice.

"On the contrary, Jahleed. It worked perfectly."

"It did?"

The salarian nodded. "You assume I asked it to open a door, when in fact I asked it to shut off the lights in this room."

"Amazing."

"Yes."

"Now what?"

"Now, for the ultimate test."

 _Ultimate,_ Jahleed thought. It meant many things. Vital. Critical. Crucial. But to Jahleed it meant something else—final. He hated that word and the triumph on Chorban's voice when he said it. Final meant the end, and in the middle, as they were, of death and destruction upon the Citadel with the skin-crawling screech of hideous monsters so nearby, the end was not something he wanted to contemplate.

 **EEE**

 _ **A**_ shotgun isn't designed for long distances. You can't take aim from a rooftop or the upper floor of a building and hope your well-practiced aim will meet the target with any amount of force. You might hurt somebody, but you're not likely to kill them. Why? Because shotguns shoot pellets, not aerodynamic bullets. Now, if you wanted to get up close and personal with an opponent, the shotgun is your friend. The shotgun is like the dagger in the blade world. It's intended to cause considerable damage at close range. If someone points a shotgun in your face, don't expect to come out of it unscathed when they pull the trigger. The medical examiner would have to source your DNA to identify you, since your face would become a meaty bone pie. Your fingerprints might be a good source of identification, as well, provided you didn't shield your face, palms outward, before the bad guy pulled the trigger.

These ideas, however, were not ones Conrad Verner had ever pursued. He liked guns, but only inasmuch as they helped him complete the picture of a soldier like Commander Shepard. He never tried, nor had ever wondered what it would be like to shoot someone up close. It was okay to pretend he knew what he was doing. Guys sometimes thought he was a real bad dude. They would drop their weapons, apologize, all while the gun in Conrad's hand was no more dangerous than a sandwich. It got him what he needed sometimes—respect, supplies, credits—which he, in turn, used to help others. He was a regular Robin Hood; a thought which made him smile.

Though, not today.

Today, the gun was real. Today, the bad guy wasn't just a poor fool as dimmed witted as his opposer. Today, the bad guy was a monster, and though it didn't know the difference between a real gun and fake one either, it wasn't going to stop unless he pulled the trigger. Today was the only day Conrad Verner was happy to have a real gun in his hands.

The half monster, half asari thing with a mouth opened like the gates of hell gave its final screech with a gurgle. The force of the blast sent its row of near-perfect yet scabrous teeth down its throat. Conrad watched it happen in the split second after the shotgun blast, but before its energy, backed up by micro mass effect fields, propelled the creature backward. It flew like someone had hit it with a powerful biotic kick and it skidded across the ground at least three feet. Yet, his gun, his arms and most likely his face were coated in a fine black mist. _Reaper blood._

Heart pounding, body shaking like a leaf in a strong breeze ( _ocean breeze)_ , Conrad waited. Three or four steps away, the hideous creature lay twitching. He could go to it, make sure, but he wasn't moving one step toward that thing. The luck of the Verner's had always been that the bad guy has the last laugh. That's why his parents were no longer around. He had turned a lot of that crappy luck in his favor lately, but in the last few weeks, it hadn't been all that good. It started with the destruction of his orphanage. He thought his good luck had been coming back around after seeing Shepard multiple times in the holding area of Docking Bay E. Helping her discover what Cerberus had done to the medi-gel supplies, meeting Jenna; each had given his luck, and his confidence, a healthy boost. Then the Reapers had come. He could still hear Jenna's screams when the husks took her. He could still see the blood.

The current state of his luck meant that if he walked up to that monster just to make sure it was dead, it would show him how dead it really was. It would jump from its place on the ground, grab him by the neck with one spindly hand and bring him close…kissing distance close. That was not a position he had any desire to be in. So, he stayed put. Even as the twitching stopped and an ooze of black blood flowed from either side of its ugly head.

It was dead. Sure it was dead.

Conrad sank to the ground, trying to breathe, and rested his head against the quickly cooling metal of the shotgun. He tried the fantasy door one more time, but it was still locked.

"Let me in, Shepard. Let me come in."

He longed for the breeze, for the grass, for the wine, for the touch. This time, though, she didn't even answer. He could almost see her, as if through a peephole. His Shepard was done with the Reaper war. She sat in his chair, she drank his wine and she enjoyed his view. There was no going back in now. He was in this for good or ill.

Conrad tried not to cry, but failed.

 **EEE**

 _ **F**_ or someone stuck in a pressure suit, breathing manufactured air, not able to move with the freedom he grew up knowing on Irune, Jahleed actually felt liberated. There was something invigorating about not being inside the crate anymore. No low ceiling or four walls enclosing him, nor was he sharing that small space with Chorban, their bodies competing for a place. They were out in the open, free to move about as they wished. There was, however, one drawback.

Reapers.

They'd had to time it just right. Light traffic had passed through their room once again. More than just one or two this time. It felt like a whole battalion. Stomping feet, grunted commands, and Chorban muttering so softly that they didn't have time to wait. Jahleed barely heard him. Thank Plenix those things hadn't, but that was just like Chorban, to let his mouth get him in trouble. All through Chorban's muttering, he had busied himself entering commands into his omni-tool, making sure the keeper kept working. The lights went on. The panel went back in place. Another panel was removed. Mechanisms and wires were realigned.

With perfect timing, and with an opportune gap in troop alignment, one door closed behind a retreating Reaper soldier while the door on the other side of the room slammed shut upon an approaching one.

"Ah-ha!" Chorban exclaimed, though not as loudly as that. Pounding upon the doors meant he hadn't just closed them, but he had locked them as well.

"Was that the ultimate test?" If it was, it was also an exceedingly stupid test.

"No." Chorban entered one last command and shut off his omni-tool. "We must move quickly. We don't have much time."

Without waiting for Jahleed's consent, Chorban rose to his full height, his palms pressed flat against the top of the crate. Light as blinding as the sun stung Jahleed's eyes, but he kept them open. There was always the chance that Chorban had not calculated as perfectly as he thought he had, and that as soon as he walked out from under the shadow of the crate, another shadow would fall over him. The shadow of a monster. But no such threat existed, except for what pounded on the outside to get in, and the room was empty save for himself, Chorban and their new friend, the keeper.

Speaking of the keeper, it had removed another panel, and instead of a wall filled with more wires and tubes, it revealed a lighted keeper tunnel.

"Oh, praise Plen—!"

Chorban pressed his hand over Jahleed's mouthpiece yet again. "Shut up," he harshly whispered, "and get in quick."

Jahleed did as commanded, Chorban ushering him with demanding hands into the tunnel; though, he couldn't help but stare and wonder at the keeper, who stood patiently waiting. A keeper opening panels to secret tunnels wasn't new to Jahleed. He had watched them open these panels before, but they usually entered and closed the panel from the inside before he had a chance to follow. Those were sucky times because Chorban always yelled at him. Jahleed couldn't help it if his suit made him incapable of moving fast. Volus were not known for keeping pace with anyone, not even keepers.

This time around, the keeper stood still, panel held fastidiously in its four hands like a waiter holds onto the menus while waiting for his guests to take their seats. The sight was as curious as a batarian with only two eyes.

As soon as they were in, Chorban furiously tapped his omni-tool and the keeper followed them in. This side of the keeper tunnel was new for both of them. Sure, they had shuffled along inside many a keeper tunnel, but this was the first time inside a hidden one. And never had they witnessed a keeper closing off such a panel from within. Sad thing was, they could no more tell what it did to close it than they could to open it. The keeper's hands moved as fluidly and as quickly as a spider spun silk and weaved the fibers into a web of the most intricate design. Before they knew it, the panel was sealed.

Turning three-sixty, the keeper faced them—Chorban kneeling, with Jahleed taking up the breadth of the tunnel behind him—just as the doors to the room they had just been in whooshed open. They kept quiet, they didn't even breath, as the troopers met each other within the room he and Chorban had just vacated. They had to know something wasn't right. The keeper gone, the upturned crate. They might be big and ugly, but they weren't stupid. There was the sound of something heavy being tossed about—the crate—and then the room went silent.

Over Chorban's shoulder, Jahleed watched a rippling waveform scroll across his omni-tool's holographic screen. A Citadel signal. The keeper turned, reached for the panel, but Chorban was quick. He tapped in a silent command and the keeper dropped its hands. It turned back to face them. Another waveform appeared and the keeper turned back around.

Chorban gasped. "Something keeps overriding my every command."

"Do something, Chorban! Do something!"

The keeper kept twisting back and forth, back and forth. Facing them, then turning away. Facing them, then turning away. It looked like a malfunctioning robot whose internal direction programming had gone haywire. Jahleed felt sure the poor little keeper would turn into a bubbling mass of liquid if this went on much longer.

Chorban's fingers moved so fast they were a blur. Unhappy growls came from the other side of the panel, and then BOOM!

Whatever made the sound was close. Close enough to levitate Jahleed off the ground for a millisecond and stop Chorban's heart for an equal amount of time. But it did something else. It caught the attention of the troops on the other side of the panel. More grunted commands and soon, the monsters were gone. The keeper turned back to them one final time. It seemed relieved. Jahleed could have sworn he saw its shoulders rise and fall.

Chorban breathed, his chest heaving, but he got to his feet, though still hunched over like he had been in the crate. Not everyone was as lucky as Jahleed to be so short in stature.

"What do you think that was?" Jahleed asked.

"It sounded like a shotgun," Chorban said. "We need to move, and quick."

"And go where? Can't we rest for a minute or two?"

"No. Are you crazy? There's no time for rest. People are dying out there."

"But what if _we_ die in _here_?"

Chorban gave his question a sneer, but otherwise ignored it while he happily tapped away upon his omni-tool again. "Now for the true test."

"Ah, does that mean we are past the _ultimate_ test?"

"Be quiet, Jahleed. You ask more questions than a hatchling." Chorban resumed tapping furiously and did his thinking aloud. "I've just entered a command that, if correctly worded, will perhaps make the keeper obey only _my_ commands in the future. Any commands it receives from the Citadel will be automatically ignored…unless of course, they are important to the security of the Citadel." Chorban moved away and pointed to an overhead light panel. "Bust out that light."

"Why?"

"Jahleed! This is not the time for twenty questions! Please…" Chorban forced himself to calm. "…just do as I ask."

What a frustrating salarian his friend could be at times! Not a day went by that he didn't ask for Jahleed to perform some nonsensical task, so why should today be any different. He shrugged in shoulders, and again, did as commanded. He was perfectly _suited_ , no pun intended, for the task. The glass wouldn't penetrate his flesh or his suit. Inside the keeper tunnel, where Jahleed felt the freest, everything was in easy reach. With just a little bit of force, he slammed one suited arm into the overhead light and glass showered down around him.

"Just as I calculated," Chorban said, looking down at his omni-tool.

Jahleed couldn't see from his vantage point, but he must have captured a Citadel signal, for no sooner than he spoke, the keeper began to move toward the damaged light. It touched a seemingly pointless section of the wall and a bottom panel protruded at Jahleed's feet. He had to stumble quickly out of the way, lest it knock him over. In five seconds flat, it had sucked up all the broken glass.

"Would you look at that!" Jahleed said, shaking his head in astonishment.

"If only we tried this months ago. We wouldn't be scrambling now. Now, to see if my command works." Chorban tapped onto his omni-tool as the keeper reached above its head to begin repairing the light.

Mid-reach, the keeper stopped, lowered its hands and turned to face Chorban, who in turn, and in a very unsalarianlike manner, pumped his fist. "Yes!"

Jahleed gasped. "It has imprinted upon you. It must think you're its mother!"

Happiness at his success quickly waned, and Chorban drew a hand over his wide eyes. "Ugh, Jahleed. Seriously? It's obeying command. A keeper is nothing more than a bug with a computer for a brain; a computer that only does what it's told."

"Well, I think you're being rather impersonal and rude," Jahleed said. He reached out a prehensor to stroke the keeper's arm, like one might a cat or a dog, or maybe a friendly varren…until he remembered the incident in the tunnel some months ago and refrained.

"Of course, I am. Have you ever been personal or polite to a bug?"

"Sure. I think we should name him. What about…Keepie?"

Chorban facepalmed once again. "We don't have time for this foolishness." He tapped his omni-tool and the keeper moved past Jahleed as if he weren't even there. It would have knocked him over if he hadn't gotten his bulk out of the way. Shuffling over to Jahleed, Chorban added, "You want to name it, name it Servant, because that's all it is. Now follow that keeper!"

Jahleed shook his head and followed his shuffling friend's lead. Chorban had never been much for animals. Jahleed, on the other hand… "Oh, I know! How about Greenie, or Buggie? Those are cute names."

"Ugh!"

The keeper disappeared around a corner and so did Chorban, but not without first shooting Jahleed an exhausted glare. Jahleed waddled behind him, miffed only because his suit prevented him from expressing his joy. They were free of the crate, free to go wherever they chose, safe in the hidden keeper tunnels. Best of all, his friend, the very one he at one time thought was out to kill him, had saved his life. Not once, not twice, but three times since the Reaper attack started. That had to be a record of some sort. Sure, they didn't always get along, and maybe sometimes Chorban could be a jerk, and maybe sometimes Jahleed enjoyed intentionally doing stupid things and asked stupid questions just to annoy him (like now), but he could not forget what Chorban had said less than twenty minutes ago.

Had it really been only twenty minutes? Jahleed checked his internal time clock, and yes, his guess was right.

Chorban had said, _"We're a team. We're one."_

So, maybe it wasn't the absence of the crate that made Jahleed feel liberated and invigorated after all.

 **EEE**

 _ **H**_ e had another dream. This one was not so good, nor had he bothered to turn it into a recurring fantasy he could enter and exit at will.

In this dream, a monster was pursuing Conrad. A big one. This thing was tall, it was ugly and it had a scream that could rival the cry of a creature in an Irish folktale—a banshee.

In Irish lore, the banshee is a spirit that heralds the death of a family member. Conrad thought he heard the cry of the banshee once as a child when he found out his parents were dead, killed as they stepped out of a restaurant for the credits in their pockets, but that turned out to be his own voice. It didn't change the dream any, the dream that began the night his parents were murdered. The thing chased him down dark streets, keening its hideous cry. It wanted him the way it had wanted his parents—DEAD.

For years, he had outrun it. It was only in recent years, finding his safe place, his "mental safe zone" as the psychologist had called it, finding someone he could look up to, he could aspire to be like, that he had been able to banish the banshee. He hadn't heard his pursuing banshee in so long, he had forgotten what it sounded like…until tonight.

Now, it lay as still and as lifeless as a rock. Bloated belly flattened. Bloated alien breasts hanging on either side of its chest like the air-filled floaties little kids wear on their arms when swimming. It was a sin to call them breasts. That thing was like no woman he had ever seen.

Had he killed it? Had he finally banished the banshee? If he did, it wasn't because he was _Conrad, the soldier or Conrad, defender of the weak._ He wasn't "so brave" as Jenna said he was. Just because he jumped in front of a bullet meant for Shepard? He only did it because the thought of Shepard dead while he still lived was worse than all the deaths in the galaxy. He surely hadn't been brave when that wave of husks infiltrated the restaurant he had invited Jenna to earlier in the evening. They had been hand in hand, as he remembered. He hadn't thought of Shepard all night, hadn't felt the need to slink into his safe place where nothing could hurt him, and he surely hadn't pretended he was something he wasn't—a soldier or a former Cerberus operative. He had just been Conrad, and it felt good.

When husks started running into the restaurant, when the screams started, he'd tried to be brave. He'd tried to get Jenna to safety. He could remember the way she held onto his arm as though no one else could or had the right to protect her. He hadn't had a weapon, so he had taken her to the back of the restaurant and through the kitchen door, hoping maybe they could get out that way. The thought hadn't occurred to him that the whole station was under attack. He should not have missed the signs. Shepard wouldn't have.

He took her through the kitchen where the staff was already freaking out at the mayhem taking place on the dining room floor. They had buzzed through the kitchen, looking for a back exit, her hand in his, when more husks poured in from the very door he had been searching for. He'd doubled back, knowing they were caught in the crossfire and not knowing what to do about it. His first thought—hide!

So, he had twisted Jenna around, found a broom closet, opened the door, and had been about to shove her in when two husks tackled her to the ground from out of nowhere. He still had the scratches on the palm of his hand from where her nails had dug in.

In a restaurant…just like his parents.

The sound of her dying screams as he hid in the closet hurt so badly that he'd retreated to the safety of his "house." So, no. He wasn't brave. He was a coward. Maybe he had saved the mother and her daughter, but in comparison to Jenna's loss, it didn't really balance the scales in Conrad's mind. He deserved to be chased by the banshee, and if she still wanted him…well then, she could have him.

Conrad pulled himself up, using the butt of the shotgun as a crutch. His legs were like jelly, but he made them move anyway. He took shaky steps toward the banshee, his fingers playing across the scratches on his palm. Shaky step by shaky step until he stood over it. Its face was essentially gone. Its mouth was still a wide-open maw, but now it was a bloody and obliterated maw. Teeth that should have been embedded in the jawbone were now embedded in pieces into the back of its head. The top jaw was a mess of shattered bone and the bottom jaw sat askew and dislocated. One obsidian eye was still open and staring, but the other was gone, the buckshot having gone through the top jaw and out the right eye socket. A piece of jawbone rested upon its boney crest as though it were meant to be there.

He wanted it to move. He wanted its long, daggerlike fingers to pierce him through the chest and end this once and for all. But the banshee wasn't going to be moving anymore. It was dead, and Conrad thought he was going to be sick. In fact, he turned to vomit up everything he had ever eaten in his lifetime when…

 _ **SCREEEECH!**_

His whole body went cold. It wasn't the one on the ground before him. It was another one, and following it was the sound of dozens of feet moving in his direction. And just that quickly, Conrad decided he wasn't ready to die. Not by the hands of a banshee. Not by the hands of husks or any other such creature. He had to run. He had to get away!

Forgetting all about the dead banshee at his feet, Conrad ran for the lift he had seen the mother and her daughter to. It should have opened automatically, but it didn't budge, and he realized with a bit of finality why.

There was a C-Sec regiment on the floor above. That's where he'd been trying to get to when he'd stumbled upon the hell taking place at the school, when his mind locked up and sent him back to his safe place for a while. They must have locked the lift when the mother and her daughter made it to their level. They must have locked the lift and now he was stuck with an approaching army headed in his direction. He was just one man. Was he so dangerous that he warranted an army?

Conrad looked down at the shotgun in his hand. He still had rounds left. Maybe he was so dangerous. Maybe it was his time to die. Conrad pumped a round into the chamber and—

Stopped dead in his tracks.

On the wall opposite the lift, a panel shifted. A beam of light penetrated the darkness on all sides of it and it slid open like a door, held steady in the left hands of an innocuous keeper. Seeing it standing there, bright white light silhouetting it from behind was like something out of a dream, or maybe even a fantasy. There had never been keepers in any of his imaginings. Stranger still, as he watched in ever-growing awe, the keeper raised its two right hands, and in a movement eerily reminiscent of a "come here" gesture, it beckoned him forward.

The screech grew louder. The pounding of feet drew closer. Red lights began to dance on the wall behind him. He was imminently close to death. Conrad could either stand and fight, or run to the light.

Conrad decided to stick with what he knew best. Dreams and fantasies, even the weird ones, were not always a bad thing. You might do things that people outside of them would question (people like your psychologist), but in the end, once inside the fantasy, no one else ran the show but the fantasizer. If, in your fantasy, Command Shepard lived for no one but you, or a keeper could wave you toward an imaginary light, what was the harm? I mean, really?

Conrad ran to the light.

* * *

 **Wanted to get this out yesterday, but life got in the way. Hate it when it does that! Anyway, hope you enjoyed this chapter.**


	11. ONE More Chance to Die

**I wanted to get this one out earlier today, but I was struggling with a chapter from an original story I'm writing. It's a romance. If you like that sort of thing, you might want to go check it out on FICTIONPRESS. I'm JENNY L. GALE on the sister site.**

* * *

 _ **MASS EFFECT: ONE**_

* * *

 **ONE MORE CHANCE TO DIE**

 **The Citadel – Before Endgame**

 **" _S_** _hould you give your last to protect the weak, your sacrifice will never be forgotten…_ _The time to take back the Citadel is now."_

Aria stood on the edge of the landing deck, listening to Bailey make his speech from several feet away. His voice echoed, bouncing off metal walls to reach her. His speech wasn't much different from her own on Omega just before the final push. Full of bravado and ego-stroking which served to rile her people into action. She hadn't made any announcements about sacrifices or protecting the weak or worrying for the care of families, however.

Those were just some of the differences between Omega and the Citadel. Family was the heart of this space station. There were more of them than there were C-Sec officers. Omega, however, wasn't a place for children or doting parents. She had no doubt there were children on Omega. She had seen them. She also had no doubt some of them died in the Cerberus coup. Many more of them would have died had it not been for Shepard disobeying Aria's direct command—reroute power from life support to shut down the forcefields that had imprisoned her and Nyreen.

Looking back now, Aria saw the folly in such an action. Her people might have turned on her had she sacrificed the lives of thousands just to get at one man. But at the time, she had been blind to all other thoughts save for retaking Omega and beating Petrovsky into the floor. The lives of children weren't even an afterthought…not until many days later, when the weight of what might have happened slapped her in the face. It didn't cripple her or set her back. Shepard's action had remedied what might have gone wrong, so Aria didn't beat herself up about it. But she took the righteous slap she deserved, served up by none other than herself. No one else would have dared.

Still, she wasn't on Omega, these weren't her people, and Shepard wasn't here. Aria had no vested interest in the Citadel. She hated the place and she hated its' Council. Nor had she any desire to 'fight until her last breath' in its defense. So, what the hell was she still doing here?

" _If you think you can change me…you're welcome to try."_

Aria slid surreptitious eyes in the direction of Bailey and Bray. If she'd spoken out loud, they hadn't heard her. They were busy wrapping up at the console where Bailey made his speech, powering it down and hoping to mask their signal.

Those were her own words, spoken to Shepard on Omega as they planned their next move in retaking the station. They had returned to her like the ghost of Nyreen. Why she had spoken them aloud was a mystery she wished she did not know the answer to.

Change was the answer.

She was still here on the Citadel because of it, and not riding out the Reaper storm on Omega until the first squall hit. From the second Aria had met her (when Shepard was nothing more than charred flesh on the bargaining table), Shepard had begun to plant tiny seeds within Aria's brain. The first seed was identifying that even in death, Shepard commanded the loyalty of those who knew her. They would give their life to save hers. The other seeds came in the form of Shepard's own words and actions, what Aria like to think of as the commander's subtle version of Reaper indoctrination. Once the seeds were planted, they birthed little worms of doubt that bored into the brain. These worms were hungry, gobbling up long-ingrained beliefs, then vomiting them back out transformed, altered. It took time, years even, but spend too long a time with Shepard, and the indoctrination worked faster. The tiny seeds made someone ruthless, like Aria T'Loak, go from promising Petrovsky she would place his severed head on a silver platter, to sparing his life so that Shepard could use him against Cerberus.

They were still there, those little worms, eating away, changing the asari she was before she met Shepard. That asari would never have allowed Citadel Security to capture her, let alone put her in omni-cuffs and record it for the entire galaxy to see. No matter the consequences, no matter the casualties, that version of Aria would have made it off the Citadel. Shepard had changed her, just as she had everyone she had ever met. Nyreen had played a hand, of course, in her final moments on Omega, but it was Shepard who planted the seed.

Aria sighed. She stood on the edge of the landing deck, listening as Bailey made his speech, not because she didn't have a choice, but because it's what Shepard would have done. Hell, Shepard would have made the speech herself, but that wasn't Aria's place. Besides, Bailey needed it and he needed to bolster his people.

"Shit," she said under her breath. There she went again with the Shepard thoughts, the goody-two-shoes thoughts. She was Aria T'Loak. Shepard might have planted her seeds and changed her thinking pattern, but she could never truly change the heart of the asari commando within. There was another reason she decided to stay, one other motivation that kept her from charging off the Citadel in a blue streak. Her name was Tevos.

Aria smacked the butt of her shotgun onto the hard floor. "Bailey," she called needlessly. The two men had already turned in her direction. "Enough with the syrupy speeches. Let's move. If the Reapers haven't discovered our location, they soon will. We've got a job to do."

Bailey slung an assault rifle over his shoulder. "What do you think I am? A tenderfoot? I know the stakes, T'Loak."

"So, what's the plan?"

"The plan?" he asked as he walked down the ramp, his voice echoing in the calm before the storm. "I put you in charge, Pirate Queen. Pretend you're on Omega. You tell me what the plan is."

Aria gave the two approaching men a grin that glimmered with the ruthlessness of her younger days. "Well then, for my first order…" She promptly snatched the C-Sec badge from her jacket and tossed it over the ledge. "Forget the rules. Sorry Bailey, but I'm not one of the Citadel's stooges. From here on out, we do things _my way."_

Bailey frowned at the lost badge. "And what way is that?"

"The only way—we employ violence. Bray, bring me that shuttle." She nodded to the one on the upper deck still in its docking braces; the one with the gun mounted on the roof.

"You got it."

Bailey looked at the blue and white security vehicle, then he drew his attention to the sounds of distant gunfire, and then looked with concern back at Aria. "Are you sure? There's a high probability we could get our asses shot down from the air."

"Do you want to get to the Council fast or take time huffing it on foot? By the sound of things, the Citadel is pretty much overrun. We won't make it five feet on foot. The shuttle is the best way."

"Yeah? It's also the best way to die."

"Don't worry, Bailey. I don't intend to die."

Bailey harrumphed. "None of us do." With an exasperated sigh, he moved to follow Bray. "If we're gonna do this, I'd better get over there. That batarian will never get into a security shuttle without my authorization."

As if in response to Bailey's comment, Bray delivered a swift kick to Aria's preferred getaway vehicle. It brought a smile to her face, but only a transitory one. The faint whir of a servomotor reached her ears in the graveyard silence of C-Sec, and a movement at the top of the ramp caught her eye. The double doors had opened, and from within spilled a horde of Reaper troops.

Aria had but a split second to react. "Get down!" she yelled, diving for cover behind a heavy crate.

Bray reacted instantly, crouching for cover at the rear of the shuttle, but Bailey had barely made it up the ramp. He was out in the open, ducking behind a railing on the upper floor in time for a shot from a cannibal's arm-cannon to rocket mere inches over his head.

"Ah, shit!" he yelled. "T'Loak? You okay?"

Aria had stowed her shotgun and brought her semi-auto to bare. She broke cover long enough to slap three bullets into a cannibal's brain. "For now! Bray?!"

A barrage of gunfire came from his location. "I'm trapped! The shuttle won't open and these bastards are closing in!"

From his hiding place, Bailey groaned in frustration. "Shades of Cerberus," he muttered. "If I get shot again…" He hollered down to Aria, "I've got an idea. Cover me!"

Reaper troops were converging toward Bray with a small contingent moving in Aria's direction. As usual, running husks took the lead. _Good,_ Aria thought, _cover._ She gave Bailey a nod and broke cover to lay waste to the oncoming beasts. Five of them in all, they came to a dead stop at the bottom of the ramp, exploded heads and shredded limbs among them. Ducking back into place, she saw that Bailey had indeed broken free of his hiding place, but he wasn't running to Bray's defense as she thought he might.

Bray wasn't visible from her vantage point, but his weapon hadn't quieted and husks were falling to pieces around him. He wasn't giving up, which was a good thing, but that didn't mean he had the time for Bailey to dick around.

"Bailey, what the hell are you doing?!"

If he answered, she didn't hear him. A screech, worse than a husk, but deeper and more malevolent than a thresher maw echoed off the walls of the landing dock. The sound of it froze the blood in her veins. Something was coming through the flight corridor, and Aria knew without having to wonder that she lacked the firepower to fight whatever it was. They were going to have to get to the council another way.

She didn't wait for it to see her. Aria hopped upon a crate, laid down a suppressing fire and jump rolled onto the opposite ramp from Bailey. The Reaper forces had effectively separated them to different sides of the landing bay. She caught a fleeting glimpse of an open security shuttle and heard the sound of engines roaring as she shuffled up the ramp and hopped a partition. It wasn't the shuttle with the overhead gun, but one closer to the landing pad. If Bailey was as smart as she thought he was, she knew exactly how he planned to get them out of this sticky situation.

One quick glance over the partition revealed the unholy beast her mind had only imagined. Whatever it was, its image was no longer left to imagination alone. Two wings and an amalgam of tubes, disorienting blue lights as well as two cannons mounted upon its head—it was like a dragon on steroids. To be caught in its sights was to kiss one's blue ass goodbye. How many had Shepard encountered? No time to wonder. Aria blasted an oncoming husk and rolled across the path out of sight toward a waiting shuttle. This one didn't have an overhead gun, but with what Bailey had in mind, she didn't have a choice.

Heavy cannon fire was tearing through the landing bay when the door to the shuttle opened and its engines fired up. If Bailey had been standing beside her, she would have kissed him. His ingenious thought had been to remotely power every vehicle. Risky, in the off chance a cannibal might be smart enough to pilot a shuttle, but it was the only option that remained. Aria jumped in, punched the button to close the door and ran to the controls.

"Aria!"

It was Bailey's voice over the comm system. Aria buckled in and donned a headset. "I'm in! Where's Bray?"

"Right here! Locked in and ready to get out of this hell hole."

"Not so fast," she said. "We've got an ugly bogie at my nine o'clock position."

"I see it," Bailey answered. "It just took out the shuttle next to me and it's about to size me up for dinner."

Bailey had been right. Her plan to fly them out of here was a high risk one. This attack was proof. But he hadn't put her in charge for her looks. Every move she had made on Omega, taking back section after section as they pushed toward the final goal of Afterlife, had been high risk. From walking through Omega's mines filled with adjutants to fighting off wave after wave of armored mechs; each and every step to the top meant one extra chance to die. And yet, she did it. She didn't stop until she had what she wanted. If they wanted not only to win, but to live, risk would have to be the name of the game here on the Citadel. Aria hadn't died taking back Omega and she had no intentions of dying to save the council, not if saving them meant getting home.

Aria gunned the engine and swung out into the creature's line of fire, drawing its attention with relentless gunfire. "Bray, take out the opposition on our flank. Bailey, let's blast this ugly son of a bitch out of our way."

Bailey didn't respond, but action never needed one. His shuttle shot out of its moorings, meeting hers in the center of the landing and opened fire. The creature for which they did not have a name, but which Alliance troops had taken to calling harvesters, was not going to give in so easily. Save for Reapers themselves, its blasts were some of the most devastating either of them had ever seen. Balls of enflamed cannon fire nearly as large as the shuttle they piloted popped one after another. Bailey and Aria careened within the limited space of the landing pad, avoiding the shots, keeping its interest on the two of them while Bray took out the contingent behind them. Far easier work, and faster, than what they were doing. Aria was quickly losing her patience.

Time for a more direct approach. Aria watched one of the harvester's cannons lock onto Bailey, the other onto her, and she smiled. It must think it has them right where it wants them.

Bailey yelled a second too late, "Aria, get the hell outta—"

The shot tore from the harvester's cannon just as Aria angled her shuttle sharply to the right. Bailey wasn't sacrificing himself for the greater good today. Her shuttle smacked into his with a deafening crash, his curse as loud as cannon fire in her ears. Aria ignored him. Her gamble had paid off. Her angled crash had knocked him over enough that they both lost a bit of altitude. The shot glanced off the roof of her shuttle. Electronics sparked within the cab. Lights flickered. The shot careened over Bray's shuttle and into the double doors. Those still pushing through them were obliterated. The second cannon fired. Aria banked left, missing the second shot by millimeters. It sped past her starboard side, smacking into the load-bearing framework above the door, which brought down everything above it, taking out the last remnants of the Reaper troops. Nothing else would be coming through that door for a long time.

Bray yelled, "Hey, those were mine!" But Aria didn't really hear him. She was far from done here. With a look of deadly determination in her fierce blue eyes, Aria gunned the engine and thundered forward. She didn't think about what might happen, only what would.

"Aria! Don't!"

Bailey's words came a fraction of a second too late. The harvester was an enormous blip on her radar before he finished speaking and her shuttle met the beast at ramming speed even as the _–n't_ snapped off the end of his lips.

The harvester bellowed like a lion taken down in a hunt as it and the shuttle tumbled off the landing pad. The last thing Bailey and Bray saw was the tip of a wing and the engines' golden fire off the aft of the shuttle. Then, they were gone. A crash, a ball of electrical flame they felt within their shuttles like a shockwave, followed by a billowy column of black smoke.

In the silence that reigned, all either of the men heard was their own ragged breathing. Then, Bray muttered, "Son of a bitch."

"I can't believe it," Bailey added. "Did T'Loak just sacrifice herself for us?"

A crackling in their headsets proved that theory wrong. "Don't be so damned dramatic! Get your asses over here and pick me up. My shuttle is toast."

Bray gunned his engines and laughed. "We wouldn't be so lucky, Bailey."

"Funny," came the asari's reply. "Shut the hell up, Bray, and get over here."

Bray found her standing atop the ruins of her shuttle, which still cracked with ruined electronics over the smoking carcass of the harvester. He hovered nearby, long enough to open the door and help Aria into the shuttle.

"What the hell were you trying to do? Get yourself killed?"

Aria gave Bray a friendly derisive smirk. "I did the job the two of you probably couldn't accomplish with a thermonuclear explosion." While Bray laughed, she keyed the comm. "Bailey, take point. Let's go kick some Reaper ass!"

 **EEE**

 _ **T**_ he Citadel is massive. If you wanted to judge its length in comparison to something you understood, imagine for a moment that you are omniscient, all-knowing and all-capable. Pluck the Citadel out of its place in the Serpent Nebula and bring it to Earth, as the Reapers would eventually do themselves. However, instead of positioning it just above the pull of Earth's gravity, bring it in to a place you're familiar with. If you live on the United State's west coast, you could rest the Presidium over Beverly Hills. By the time one of its long arms touched down, it's end would hover nicely over Long Beach. East coast—you could settle the Citadel comfortably at the tip of Manhattan and its arms would reach all the way northeast to the town of Valhalla. The Kensico Dam Plaza would be able to bask in it's shadow. The south—well, near the city of New Orleans, the Citadel could probably sit within Lake Pontchartrain like a kid in a kiddie pool.

If you lived on the Citadel, its colossal size would be commonplace to you, much like knowing your little home on Earth is no bigger than the size of a microbe in comparison to some stars out in the galaxy. This was something Bailey took for granted every day of his life. The Citadel was big. It housed over thirteen million people (a number that doesn't even begin to account for keeper life, which no one has ever been able to calculate), including the council and all its embassies. If you wanted to effectively shut down government across all of council space and throw the galaxy into chaos, this was the place you would bring to bear all of your might. Cerberus had known that, and apparently, so did the Reapers.

Two shuttles shot from the C-Sec flight corridor onto upper Zakera ward, and into a nightmarish panorama. Smoke rose from isolated pockets of fire about the ward. On the streets below, one could see, if they chanced to look out a window, flashing lights that on a good day one might mistake for firecrackers or sparklers, instead of the white _pop-pop-pop_ of projectiles fired from Reaper weapons. Yet, traffic moved and life seemingly went on upon the station as it had on any other day. Even their two shuttles would have looked like two small points of light, moving to whatever destination, to anyone else on an opposite ward. But the three of them knew different. Above them and to the east and west, the other wards— Tayseri, Kithoi, Aroch, and Bachjret—were caught in the same trap. The Citadel was under siege yet again. On every ward there would be screams, gunfire, explosions, death.

It was hard to imagine thirteen million people on their way to dying a gruesome death, the three of them included. If Shepard's stories of Reapers harvesting bodies with the expressed purposed of creating a new Reaper were to be believed, then they were in for one long haul. Maybe that's why this mission felt so crucial. Getting to the council, getting them off the Citadel and onto Omega, might buy them time they needed to plan a recapture.

But Bailey had a bad feeling. Flying out over Zakera ward, something didn't feel right, and it wasn't the terror going on below him. This was something else, something beyond the death and the dying happening in the streets.

Unlike the shuttles that ferried soldiers onto the battlefield, Citadel security shuttles were not as heavily armored, but they did have onboard weapons and bulletproof windows. The Presidium horizon, viewed through Bailey's forward windows was what baffled him. What he typically saw on any given day when he chose to step out of his offices, was the smoky miasma of the Serpent Nebula. It filled the viewable galaxy around them, some days heavier than others. The star at the center of the Widow system gave the nebula its luminosity. On good days, the nebula gasses were white like fog rolling in off the lake on a spring evening. On better days, when the galactic dust particles were particularly thick, the white shifted into pink or magenta with golden hues. Those were the days when Bailey like to take his morning coffee out on the terrace.

Today, as they streaked across Zakera ward's sky toward the looming Presidium, there were no white clouds of fog, nor any dust casting an alternate hue. Bailey saw nothing but black beyond the vastness of the Citadel, punctuated by streaking points of light. For a second, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. He wasn't seeing what he thought he was seeing…until it hit him, until he remembered what Shepard had said about the Reapers. This wasn't the asari's space station, nor did it belong to the salarians or the turians. Hell, it hadn't even belonged to the protheans as they had believed for millennia. The Citadel belonged to the Reapers, and as it would clearly appear, they had retaken control of it.

Bailey opened his mouth to say what he was seeing, to explain to his two companions in battle, exactly what he thought was happening, when his shuttle shook like it had been caught in a hurricane. It rocked and twisted in the air. Something flew past him overhead, careening beyond him and smacking with an immense explosion into the side of a towering building. Bailey tapped in a command to turn on his rearview (which he cursed himself for not having done the moment he got into the shuttle), and thought his eyes were playing tricks on him once again.

Behind them, swooping and diving like an eagle after a field mouse, was that Reaper flying machine with cannons for eyes. Had it regenerated? Come back to life? No, couldn't be. If the Reapers could pop husks out by the dozen, God knew how many of those things they had flying around the Citadel.

As the one inside C-Sec had, this one was targeting him first. Take the weak down, then concentrate all fire on the strongest. That seemed to be the Reaper's motto. And it was gunning for him. Bailey barely missed a third shot as he watched the batarian's shuttle twist into its line of fire, trying to draw its attention. _Brave,_ Bailey thought, _but stupid._ He was already done for. His shuttle was going down.

 **EEE**

 _ **T**_ hey were moving fast, almost there. The damned Presidium loomed ahead like a ring balanced on the tip of a finger, and they were the tiny bugs flying toward it. Were the Zakera ward really a finger, they would have already traveled past the distal joint and on toward the tip.

 _Almost there!_

They might have made it, too, had a deafening screech, loud enough to force them to cover their ears not penetrated the cabin of the shuttle. A bright orange ball of flame rocketed past them, sending Bailey's shuttle careening wildly off course.

Aria didn't bother muffling a curse. "Shit! What now?"

Bray glanced left. "We've got another bogie descending at our port side."

She glanced at the rear-camera feed and sure enough, there was another one of those flying bastards hugging their tail. But it didn't want them. It was after Bailey as surely as the other one had been inside of C-Sec. Damned fool. He should have known better than to broadcast that announcement. Now every Reaper on the Citadel was after him.

Aria released the locks holding her in her seat.

"Are you nuts?" Bray asked.

"No," she said nonchalantly as she got out of her seat. "Just determined."

Bray shoved her back in. "Hold on!"

The Harvester behind them was gaining speed. It ascended, wings spread wide like a bird of prey, then dropped and nosedived straight toward them. A second shot popped from its maw. Bray's four eyes never blinked while he watched the harvester's movements on his radar. Instead of dodging out of the second shot's path, Bray moved into it.

"What are you doing?"

He was working on hunches here. Not necessarily a good thing in the middle of a battle with a monster you know little to nothing about, but his hunches almost always paid off. It's what saved his life on the docking bay when C-Sec officers had descended upon himself and Grizz, and it had saved his life again in cell block D. He had a hunch these bastards' cannons worked a bit like heat-seekers, and by the name of every god on Khar'shan, if he wasn't right. The missile forgot its intended target and concerned itself with them. Now to get it off their ass.

Bray gave the shuttle a sharp turn to the left (though not so hard that he tossed his unbuckled employer out of her seat) and roared past a towering building. A part of him prayed to those same gods on Khar'shan that there was nobody in there as he hooked a sharp right, ripping past it and coming back behind Bailey. His prayer ascended and the second shot buried itself into the side of the building mere meters from Bailey's shuttle.

"Now go," he shouted to Aria whose grimace had twisted into her famous blue-eyed glare of death.

"If this were any other situation," she began, getting out of her seat once again, "and if you were any other person, I'd have shot you in your seat and tossed you off the side. Never lay your hands on me again."

Bray tossed her a quick but impatient glance and harrumphed. "Good thing the Reapers want me dead worse than you."

Aria ignored his insolent little laugh. She had no choice. The harvester's baleful screams meant she had little time to move from the front of the shuttle to the back. Bray's movements made it difficult to keep her feet, but just as she had in the twists and turns of her life, Aria always wound up standing at the top on both feet.

As most turrets go, the one inside this shuttle was unique, in that it didn't ascend to a bubble above the vessel in order gauge line of sight. The turret was one self-contained unit comprised of an awkwardly reclining gyroscopic chair and two handlebars in order to control weapon movement with a combination vid/radar holographically suspended between them.

Aria hopped in, hating that she had to waste valuable seconds buckling herself into it, but the unit wouldn't activate unless her butt was jammed into the seat and the safety harness was in place. Not until then did the radar screen power up, lighting her blue face and its wicked smile with a purple hue. She jerked left, turning the turret one hundred and eighty degrees, finding her target a scant five meters off their starboard bow. It was lining Bailey up in its sights again. She heard Bray sound the warning to the C-Sec exec. Aria stepped on the trigger.

That's right. The turret's trigger wasn't a button near her thumb. It's working ability encompassed all parts of the body. Keeping the turret in motion was the job of the upper body. One wouldn't want to worry about depressing a finger trigger in the middle of a hard turn. Firing was the job of the lower body. At Aria's feet were two pedals. The left spit 25mm cartridges out at a rapid pace. The right shot cannon explosive shells. Not as powerful as those of the harvester, no doubt, but in succession, Aria was certain they could do great damage. And she was more than gleeful to get started.

She aimed the center of her targeting laser at the beast's head. No need to waste bullets. She pressed the right pedal and the explosive shell made contact with a big orange explosion, tossing the harvester off its target. It jerked to the left. She opened up with a barrage of gunfire, tearing up its right side. The harvester screeched, gained altitude and let off another shot. The shuttle banked, twisted, drawing off this third shot from Bailey, but making it difficult to keep her target.

"Keep it steady, Bray!"

"I'm trying to keep Bailey alive!"

He had barely finished when a deafening explosion rocked the shuttle on the port side. Aria felt herself shake within the turret, now glad she had wasted time buckling herself in.

"What the hell was that? Are we hit?"

"I don't know!"

She turned the turret to port, expecting to see another harvester closing in and saw something she never wanted to see in any of her one thousand years. A blast of sound rocked the shuttle louder than anything a harvester was capable of. It was the sound of a million trumpet horn blasts all pounded together and pushed through a tunnel of iron. A cacophony born in hell.

A Reaper.

Had Aria been on the ground, she would have stumbled from one of its heavy footfalls as it stepped through a column of smoke, but she wasn't. She was in the air and its massive cyclopean red eye seemed to bore through the camera and the vid screen right into her. The destruction it had left in its wake, and the promise of what it intended to bring upon the galaxy, upon all life, might have rocked her back into her seat had she not already been so tightly strapped in. She felt small within its gaze. She wasn't Aria T'Loak, she wasn't a pirate queen, she wasn't even Omega. She was a bug. A useless, insignificant bug that it could squash with just one stomp of its mechanical foot. A bug it could obliterate with one shot from its red eye.

Life passed before her eyes, a series of events that had made the bug what it was. This bug started from the bottom. It learned early in life that the things you wanted weren't handed to you. You had to work for them, and sometimes you had to take them when they weren't given freely. It crawled up from the bottom of the bug pile, doing what it must to survive, stepping on other bugs if it had to, clipping wings, pulling out strong arms or legs, sometimes cutting off heads, but eventually it made it to the top, it reigned as Queen…

…only to find out there was something bigger than the bug pile with a foot big enough to squash them all in one fell swoop.

A voice echoed in her ear. "One day, Aria, you're going to find yourself in my position." The voice of her self-proclaimed Patriarch. She saw him as clear as she saw the Reaper now, bloodied, beaten, near death on the floor of Afterlife. She could remember how he hacked and coughed blood, spitting with contempt at her feet. "You're going find yourself under the foot of a usurper. You'll stare down the barrel of his weapon. You'll be sick at the sight of his triumph. Then you'll remember, and you'll wish you hadn't, that you're nobody. In the grand scheme of things, Aria T'Loak, you are just another bug to be stepped on."

The shuttle tore past that big red eye. Her targeting laser remained fixed upon its center, but for the first time in Aria's life, she froze. She was the bug standing under the shoe as it came down. She was the deer caught in the headlights; or in this case, the redlights. For years she had lived her life omnipotently, no fear of encroachment upon her rule and no fear of death. She couldn't die. She was Aria T'Loak. _She was Omega!_ It wasn't until this moment, looking damnation in the eye, that she saw herself for what she really was—just another puny lifeform struggling to make it in a galaxy where it was easy to die. Aria, her face contorted in a rictus of terror that only seconds before she would have found alien, could feel death crouching behind her, two hands on her shoulders, whispering in her ear: _I have come for you, Aria. You thought you could defy me. You thought you could outrun me, but now I am here. It is time for me to take control now._

"Shoot!"

Strangely, the voice of death had a familiar ring. It sounded like Bray.

"Aria! Don't go all soft on me now! Bring that gun to bear and blast that son of a bitch into the ground!"

As if Bray had jolted her with an electric prod, Aria gripped the handlebars even as death tightened its grip on her shoulders. Death's red beam of light filled her view screen, turning her face from blue to red. She blinked the terror away, she got back in the game and she stamped her foot down on the cannon pedal. If she could have, she would have spat death in the face with the same sort of contempt that the Patriarch had shown her. She might be just a bug, but she was a bug with a big gun and an ego to match.

 _I am Aria T'Loak, and_ _ **I am Omega!**_

"Bray, descend! Now!"

The bottom went out beneath her as they dropped. It forced the shot from the shuttle's cannon to go wide and smash into the Reaper's outer hull, missing its red eye. Aria slammed on the pedal again with a gritted, angry grimace. This time the shot landed center mass, exploding into a red-orange flame. The Reaper stumbled backward, closing its five "eyelids." Aria and Bray gave a simultaneous yell of triumph, and then the blast of a million horns sounded again, the eyelid opened and the Reaper took another step forward.

"Damn, we only made it angry," Bray said through her headset. The shuttle banked. "I'm coming around again!"

Another explosion hit the side of the shuttle.

"That damn bogie! It's still there!"

Aria twisted in the turret so fast, her head spun. A red beam shot off the stern, again missing them by centimeters, but she had the harvester in her sights. Her feet were poised over the pedals. She was about to let off another barrage of bullets when a blue streak passed in her view.

Bailey!

"Take that mother out, Aria," she heard him say. "Or we are all toast!"

The lesser armored security shuttle pivoted to the rear of the harvester, blasting it with its forward guns. As Bray brought them around, Aria was able to watch several of the bullets ricochet off the back of the creatures head. The harvester veered toward Bailey's shuttle, kamikaze-style, and Bailey unloaded on it. One slug managed to impact the innards of the harvester's cannon and ignite a discharging explosive as it left the chamber. The harvester didn't have time to screeched in protest. Its head exploded like a fireworks display on Armistice Day!

But that didn't stop its forward momentum. It slammed into Bailey's shuttle with the force of a bullet. Like two dancers wreathed in black smoke, they pirouetted out of Aria's video feed, taking a trail of smoke with them. Something inside screamed at her to descend, but she didn't have control of the vessel, only its weapons. And maybe that was good thing. Another blast of horns demanded her attention. As much as her mind may have warred with her, she couldn't waste time thinking about Bailey. Were their positions reversed, he would have done the same.

Bray came back around. The ultimate monster's eye was in her view, and Aria took her shot. A shell exploded from the cannon, big as life and loaded with Aria's ice cold indignation.

It wasn't the end, she knew that. This humongous walking bug wasn't going to go down after a few hits from a security shuttle. Still, she had firmly believed the shell would meets its mark and give her another notch on her weapon. The Reaper proved her wrong. It might be just a big walking bug in comparison, but it was also a smart big bug. Seconds before the shell made impact, it pivoted minimally to its left and the shell buried itself into the hull, leaving no more than a burn mark.

She listened to Bray curse and swear to whatever gods he worshipped. Caught in the tight quarters of two towering buildings and one advancing Reaper, their maneuverability was lost. For Bray, it seemed their number was up. His curses said he was thinking of home, of family, but now was not the time for sentiment. They had to focus. They had to think, and in this situation, they had to think small. Bray was big, he was tall. It was understandably hard for him to think in the terms of what he really was—a small bug. Now that Aria knew exactly what she was in relation to the galaxy—and it had taken staring into the eye of a Reaper to figure it out—she realized she had possessed this knowledge all of her life. She had thought small for a long time as she rose to the top. Think small until you're not anymore. She thought commando until she became Commander. She thought smalltime dancer at Afterlife until she _owned_ Afterlife. If she had to think bug until she became bug-killer, she would do whatever it took.

The horns blasted and the red eye targeted.

"Dive, Bray! Dive!"

He may have given up, he may have cursed his gods, but Bray still knew how to obey. The shuttle descended at a sharp rate. A sharp, grating sound reverberated within the cabin and it shook as though they'd hit turbulent air. The beam had given them a close shave in all likelihood. Bray cursed again. Their chances were running out.

"Get us underneath!" Aria demanded and Bray went in tight around the Reaper's forward right leg. There were four in all, but for now, Aria thought bug…and what do all bugs have? A soft underbelly.

Aria swiveled the seat nearly into an upside down position and let bullets fly. They hit the Reaper's underbelly with mild explosions. Okay, so, not such a soft belly, but explosions were a good sign. And so was the sound of its agonized roar.

The shuttle made its own roar as they exited the upper slope of its tail end, Bray executing a three-sixty turn and angling back for another run even as the Reaper was turning around step by thundering step. Its red beam tore through buildings in an effort to get at their tiny craft, but they were far too limber for its lumbering insectile body to keep up with. Coordinating their attack, Bray and Aria aimed for a leg joint on their way under. It was a risky move, but so was everything else Aria had ever done, and Bray was fine with that as long as it got him home.

Cannon and bullets found their way into one joint, ripping apart bearings, obliterating pistons. The shuttle shot forward, barreling its way underneath the Reaper even as it lost its balance and began to fall. Aria managed to get off two more cannon blows to its underbelly, creating blinding yellow-orange explosions, before they shot out low to the ground and skirted debris left behind in the beast's wake.

"We got the bastard!" Bray screamed into her headset seconds before the rear of the shuttle exploded. A burning heat singed Aria's skin and were it not for the straps holding them in their seats, both of them would have been ripped from the gaping hole left by the explosion. Somehow, the shuttle still flew. It had to be going on momentum. In seconds, they would crash and they would probably roll. What would happen after that, Aria didn't know. Was this to be her end? If so, she could be at least comforted by the fact that she had stomped on the bigger bug and won. She had come out on top at the end.

She didn't need to look through her view screen to know what had taken them out. The Reaper, in its death throes and as it lay hobbled upon the streets of Zakera ward, threw one final red beam at their retreating shuttle, exploding their engines and rendering their escape a futile one. Their shuttle descended to the debris strewn streets, racing toward a pile of debris that might have once been a water fountain display or a monument of some sort, but was now nothing but a heap of destruction. In those few seconds, Aria watched the Reaper's red eye darken, and then explode. She even had time to grin.

The shuttle reached the debris pile. Bray pulled up, hoping he still had the struts to make the maneuver. He must have had something back there, because the nose of the shuttle raised up just enough to clear the debris. Instead of hitting it nose first and crumbling the forward end of the shuttle clean into his chest cavity, it struck the top of the pile. There must have been something solid beneath, because, like a surfer hitting the crest of a wave, they soared up and over. If Bray hadn't been gritting his pointed teeth he might have bit his tongue clean off when they hit the ground at better than half the shuttle's full speed. They didn't roll, thank whatever gods were watching over them, but they did spin. The screech of metal on metal, a three sixty view of destruction, and then they hitched up against the side of a ruined building. Bray heard a crunch and his world went blissfully black.

 **EEE**

 _ **Y**_ ellow neon lights flickered inside the shuttle's cabin and across her vision. Aria struggled to catch her breath. They had come to a neck-breaking stop. Every part of her body ached, especially around her ribs where the chair's straps had held her in place. The last hour had been a nightmare, but in it she had both lost and rediscovered herself all within the most terrifying ride of her life. The terror wasn't sure to end anytime soon. Surely the next hour would be more of the same. More close calls. More near misses. More chances to stare death right in the face and dare it to take its last punch.

Aria unbuckled herself from the chair. The tricky part was going to be to get out. She was on her back, the chair and the overhead cannon flipped into the upward position by her weight as well as the angle in which they had come to a stop. The shuttle was dead, so there was no chance of righting the chair electronically. Aria rolled to her right, groaning against the pain in her ribs. She didn't think they were broken. Her feet found the floor and she held onto the chair, holding it in place so it wouldn't spring back up until she was out.

Lifting the hem of her white leather jacket, she saw a purplish-black bruise in the perfect shape of a harness strap forming on her side. Aria muttered a curse. She didn't have time for pain. There was still a job to do, and they had to find Bailey. A groan inside the cockpit drew her attention, and Aria stepped through the partition to see Bray exiting his own self-inflicted prison. Save for a cut lip, which he'd likely gotten from his own damn teeth, and a bump on his head oozing a thick, red-colored blood, he looked okay.

Aria huffed and leaned against the partition. It hurt to breath. "Alive?"

Bray nodded once. "Alive, but I don't know how. Luck, maybe?"

"Luck, my ass. We're alive because we made it that way. Get your gear. We've gotta find Bailey."

"If _he's_ alive," he said, slinking wearily back into the cockpit.

"He damn well better be. This whole thing was his idea."

Leading the way, Aria didn't bother with the shuttle's door. It was designed to pop open and drop officers into the scene of conflict or battle. They were already in battle, and the shuttle's days of dropping officers was over. With one door wedged against whatever debris they had fetched up against and the other mangled by cannon fire, the only exit was the gaping hole at the rear. They exited through it, careful not to touch any of its still smoldering edges, and entered onto a world of darkness and chaos.

Aria didn't know what she would have preferred to see or hear when she stepped out. The sound and signs of battle? Or deadly silence? Neither was particularly preferable, but neither was their current view.

The sound of gunfire could be heard in the distance, but here it was eerily quiet. They had crash landed in what might have once been a business district. The bodies strewn along the street, like trash that someone might toss to the ground, wore business suits and dresses. Across the street stood a building that might have once been a bank based upon the coin logo still flickering a neon yellow. A skycar had become embedded into the second floor. The rear was engulfed in flame and its passenger side door had been blow off as if someone had set a charge to it. On the headrest of the passenger seat was a dark splatter. It began to sizzle as the heat advanced.

All around were crashed skycars and shuttles, pockets of flames. Bullet holes danced up the side of buildings and through windows. The street had become a trash heap, littered with glass and bits of molding, iron struts from the tops of buildings, chunks of galvanized masonry. Huge swathes had been torn from the buildings above. One building rested precariously against another. Aria looked to her right, her view blocked by the rise of debris they had vaulted over, but just over it was the Reaper they had taken out. She didn't doubt what had caused most of this destruction. And it wasn't the only one.

A million trumpet blasts greeted her and Bray from a great distance. Not so close as to be an imminent threat, but close enough to worry that they didn't have the relative protection of a shuttle. Aria mentally shuddered at the sound of it and looked to Bray to see if she had shuddered physically, but he wasn't looking at her. His eyes had tuned into the location of its sound. She could almost see him working out the distance in his mind.

"Now what?" Bray asked, his fingers tightening around the trigger of his rifle.

"Now we find Bailey."

Bray huffed irritably. "He went down somewhere south of us, near that hulking machine. Trust me, I get keeping the team together and all that, but there's more of those bastards on the way. We need to get the hell off the street."

"Don't placate me with your worries, Bray. I know the situation we're in, and Bailey is partly responsible…whether he believes he is or not. He started this mission and I'm not letting him off so easily. He and the council are our only tickets off this tomb and we're taking it." She pumped a round into the chamber. "Now, let's move."

Aria broke off into a jog, skirting the towering debris pile that was part water fountain, part monument, part skycar, and (Bray saw with some wonder) part harvester, while Bray gave another huff. This one wasn't irritated, but worried. He had known Aria for a long time. She was a vengeful woman, who suffered fools lightly and suffered betrayers even less. She could be forgiving, given the right circumstances, but she certainly never went out on a limb for anyone but herself.

The huff exhaled, he too broke into a jog behind Aria. Keep the team together, he told himself. He would chalk up her un-Aria-like response to that. They were each a chink in the council's armor. Lose one and the armor would begin to unravel. The council would be lost. That's what he told himself, but he didn't give one good shit about the council. He cared about getting back to Omega, back to his kid. If the council was his ticket, then he would see whatever Aria wanted done, up to and including serving them a succulent dinner while he watched starving.

They ran no farther than a fourth of a mile until they came upon a chunk of skycar smack in the middle of the street. Aria crouched behind it and Bray followed suit. She peered over the edge. A block away was the remains of their Reaper friend. Bray didn't like the look of uncertainty that wrinkled her brow.

"Anything?" he whispered.

She breathed. "It looks dead."

"I thought it was dead."

"We took it down with a _security shuttle_. I want to be sure."

Bray rolled all four of his eyes, jumped up and sprayed it with bullets. They struck with the hollowness of tin cans. It didn't move and neither did Bray.

"Sure yet?"

Aria got to her feet. "Don't make me regret saving your ass back on the cell block."

"What the hell is the matter with you, Aria? You act like you're afraid."

Aria hardly knew how to answer that. On Omega, watching Petrovsky and Ashe slowly but surely use The Illusive Man's abominations to take over her station, she had felt fear for the first time. That fear was of having everything she had worked so hard to accomplish ripped out from under her feet fast enough to make her head spin. And it had happened just like that. She'd barely had time to realize what they had done until it was too late. She'd been duped, used, beaten and stabbed in the heart, her daughter taken from her, her life's work ripped from her hands. Standing here on the Citadel, none of that matter now. It was all, as humans liked to say, water under the bridge. Done and over with. Staring down a Reaper was the now. This thing had shown her exactly what she was. Small. A speck on a map. Inconsequential. She might rule Omega, but the Reapers ruled the galaxy and that was no small feat. She respected them in a way, but that respect had been won from fear.

She looked at Bray. "You're damn right I'm afraid. If it's alive, if it's just jerking us around, one shot is all it would take. It would vaporize us in an instant. I've still got too much to fight for to go out like that."

Bray looked back at the supposedly dead Reaper and crouched back down. "Okay, I get it. But what are we going to do? Sit here and take pot shots at it until it gets annoyed?"

Aria's disgusted frown was the answer. She lifted her chin to a crumbling, single-story corner building across the street. The windows were all blown out. The door hung askew, and it was right next to the Reaper. "We make a break. One at a time."

The ridge between Bray's eyes creased. All six of his nostrils flared and he showed his teeth. "Let me guess. I go first."

Aria did him a disservice by initially looking away, but then those blue eyes shot back up and met his with certainty. "Yes. You've always been loyal to a fault, Bray. That's not something I easily forget."

He gave a typical batarian growl, his eyes like hot pokers boring into hers. He wanted to go home more than anything in the world, but Aria was right. He _was_ loyal to a fault. Aria might be a bitch of a boss, but she had done right by him and his family more times than she had done wrong. Bray gripped her lapel. "If I die before you, I'll be looking for you in the afterlife."

Aria grinned. "And I'll buy you a drink."

"That's not the afterlife I'm talking about, so you better hope I don't die."

Bray slipped past her, and the grin slipped off Aria's lips. He had never threatened her before, not to her face anyway. The fact that the threat was meant for _after_ they died didn't lessen the sting any, or the anger. As Bray scuffled across the street, hopping from debris pile to debris pile, trying to stay out sight (and yet knowing if the Reaper had targeted him he was toast no matter what he crouched behind), Aria mumbled to herself, "I hope you don't die either."

Hiding behind a rock of fallen masonry, Bray eyed the final pointless area of cover he would have before making it to the building—a street lamp. It was wide enough to cover his back and his buttocks, but his shoulders would stick out. Anything with half a brain would know a person lurked on the other side of it. There was no point in wasting his or the possibly live Reaper's time with making for anything other than the building. Bray looked behind him and saw that Aria had already moved up. He took a deep breath and made a run for it.

His heart nearly stopped dead in his chest. A dissonant blast of horns shook the air around him and he dove for an open window. His body cleared the opening and he skidded across a glass-strew floor before he recognized that the blast was a distant one. Getting closer, of course, but not their dead friend on the street. Bray raised his head and saw through an obliterated window that it still lay in charred ruins on the ground, a new heap of debris to hide behind.

Aria was inside within seconds. She reached out a hand to help Bray to his feet. He waited for her to deride him, but she said nothing. Instead, she went to the blown-out door that let onto the cross street.

"Shit."

"What is it?"

Her blue face had gone pale. Bray followed her to the door.

"Look." She pointed.

Above the distant buildings, they saw not one, but two more Reapers bobbing up and down as they stomped about. Fire ignited around them. Gunfire tore through the darkness. Screams…

Nyreen's fear of the adjutants made perfect sense now.

Bray took her raised arm by the wrist and lowered it. "No," he said, pointing lower. "Look."

Ahead, and across this street, was the smoldering remains of Bailey's security shuttle. The door was open.

They no longer feared the Reaper. Weapons at the ready, both of them shot out of the open doorway and onto the street. The sounds of battle were close, and closing in, but they had to be sure.

"Bailey!" Aria called as she entered the shuttle.

Bray waited on the outside, doing his duty to cover Aria. He was her bodyguard after all. She came back out with a shake of her head.

"He's not here. That means he's alive."

"Where the hell could he have gone?"

"Probably looking for us. He probably saw us go down."

"Do we double back?"

"No, we—"

She had been about to say that they needed to keep moving forward when her eyes caught sight of a figure running like the wind toward them. Instinctively, she raised her weapon. Bray, coming around to her left, did the same. It wasn't until the figure cleared a deserted building and an angle of light from a cross street caught him broadside that they realized it was Bailey. He was running like the wind, but he was limping, and he had an arm braced around his middle. Aria and Bray lowered their weapons and ran to meet him halfway. He could hardly breathe when they met him, let alone speak. Frantically, he waved his weapon up and down, his mouth moving but no words coming out.

"What the hell, Bailey?"

His lips puckered beneath wide, frightened eyes. He was trying to say something, but it was a mumbled, incomprehensible mush.

" _What?"_

When it came, what it meant was not only comprehensible, but gut churning.

" _RUN!"_

The distant trumpet blasts couldn't mask the pounding of many feet. Something was coming. Something in numbers. Bray took Bailey by his injured side and they blindly hauled ass back across the street. Neither of them could have said if they made it back inside the useless safety of the decimated building. Neither of them knew if whatever was coming had seen them. They only knew they needed cover.

Back through the door. No point in closing it. The door didn't exist anymore. What Aria hadn't noticed when she first blew through here, she noticed now. This wasn't an office building with desks and plush chairs. It was a diner. There were dining tables. Some of them were on their sides or flipped upside down. There was food on the floor. People had been in the middle of meals when the attack started. There was a dining counter shot up with bullets and half-singed by fire. If this was a diner, then there was a kitchen.

Sure enough, behind the counter on the far side, Aria saw a door. The pounding feet were getting closer. She jumped behind it, then helped Bailey over while Bray followed. They were through the door, praying to whatever god they owned to when the arriving horde reached them.

The kitchen was sparse but untouched save for one dead human male who did for himself what he wouldn't allow the Reapers to do. A gun lay on the ground beside him. The side of his head was a gaping hole. Whatever had been there was splattered on the wall beside him.

Bray led Bailey to huddle behind a stainless steel island that housed cookware and seasoning. They dropped behind it, trying to ignore the cook's dead body next to them, while Aria gauged their level of safety. She peered through a crack in the door and watched as a horde of husks trampled past the diner, looking for their lost prey. A couple of them seemed to hover about the dead Reaper, touching it, moaning over it (grieving over it?), but the majority moved on. She waited, eating up the time they had to catch their breath, for the rest of them to disappear.

One turned from the Reaper. Its blue robotic eyes surveyed the interior of the diner. As soon as it took one step to approach, the rest of them running around the corner in supposed pursuit, suddenly slowed. Some of them even came to a stop.

"Shit," she whispered.

She knew it. That damned Reaper was in some way, shape or form still alive. It must have communicated to the husk where they were. It was coming to the diner. It was coming to the door.

Aria stepped away and stood with her back against the wall. She couldn't see Bray, but Bailey had stuck his head around the edge of the island. Their eyes met across the room, and Aria conveyed everything in the seconds before the door opened.

Trapped in the well between the wall and the opening door, Aria bided her time. If just one gave the signal, they were dead. Scraggy, dead fingers wound around the door's edge, fingers with nails designed for ripping, tearing. And yet, she waited. A desiccated face came into her line of sight, hairless, practically skinless, with tubes running into its mouth like a horse's bit. _All the better to control you,_ Aria thought. The door slid silently closed behind it. Aria didn't think. She took one step, placed an arm over its throat, a hand across its eyes, and twisted, efficiently snapping its neck. The husk went limp in her arms, but she didn't let it drop. She didn't want to draw further attention. For good measure, she grabbed a knife from the butcher block and rammed it into its temple, not giving it a second to transmit any information.

Looking out, the remaining husks were mulling about indecisively. Then, one by one, they began to move. Aria didn't take one more breath until they all disappeared from her line of sight. Her sigh was the sign that, for now, they were okay.

Bray appeared above the island with Bailey a close second. "That was the closest call I think I've ever had in my entire career," Bailey said. He was grimacing, holding his side.

"We're okay?" Bray said.

"For now, no thanks to Bailey."

"Hey," he said, insulted. "That's the second time today that I've saved your damn life. You could at least show a little gratitude."

"We're in this predicament because of your little broadcast. If it weren't for you, we'd probably already be inside council chambers."

Bailey came around the kitchen island and stepped toward Aria. Even in the darkened interior, she could see his face burning red with a hot and ugly anger. "In case you forgot, there are over thirteen million people on this space station. We're not the only ones struggling to survive on this goddamn rock. I just watched a shitload of husks take out a building full of _school children!_ So, don't tell me what sort of predicament we're in. This is my home!"

Aria felt it. She felt it like a slap to the face, but she didn't flinch. She wouldn't let him see her flinch. "Well, I'm glad to see it hasn't taken the fight out of you. We're going to need it. You're back on point. Lead the way." She stepped back, leaving the exit open to Bailey.

If his face could have gotten any hotter, it might have spontaneously combusted. "You bitch." He didn't yell or scream it. That would have been unwise. He said it with a husky growl, not unlike Bray had minutes ago.

Aria blinked, sighing uncaringly and rather impatiently. Bailey took a step forward and Bray stopped him with a hard grip on his arm.

"Don't sweat it, Bailey. That's Aria. Get used to it. You got your gratitude when she went looking for you. I would've left your ass."

Bailey gave Aria one last hard look, but the color had left his face. He stood down, gripping the side of the island, grimacing once again. Bray hit him with a dose of medi-gel which he _was_ grateful for. He gave Bray his gratitude with a solemn nod.

"Children?" Bray asked, Bailey's solemnity mirrored. "Really?"

Bailey nodded, his head low. "Yeah. A school full."

The batarian cursed under his breath, but Aria had little patience for the conversation. And she didn't want to think on husks attacking a room full of children. She didn't want to think on the utter terror that must have been in their eyes and stretched onto their faces. When her mind went to the sight of those husk claws on the door frame, she saw them clawing their way through tender flesh and…

Aria she shook her head. "Enough! I told you to take point, Bailey. So, take point."

"You know what, kiss my ass! I put you in charge of the mission. I didn't put you in charge of me." He looked between the two of them. "You two don't really know what the hell's going on here, do you? You're so intent on getting off the station at any costs, that you haven't stopped to look any higher than a reaper. Have you looked _up_ lately?"

"I don't know about you, but we've been somewhat busy," Aria said impatiently.

"We're moving."

"Who?"

"The Citadel. In case you haven't noticed, we're not in the Serpent Nebula anymore, boys and girls. This station is moving like a rocket through space—"

Aria never let him finished. She pushed through the door, into the diner and out onto the street. She didn't think about the maybe-dead, maybe-alive Reaper. She looked up, and sure enough, the sky above her wasn't milky white, but black and streaked with stars. They were moving alright. Moving like lightening through the galaxy to an unknown destination.

She pushed back through the kitchen door to meet Bray's curious eyes. "Well?"

"Bailey's right," she said after several seconds of silence. She looked at Bray. She wouldn't look at Bailey, didn't want to mark her concession with a visual connection.

"You're damn right I'm right," Bailey said, his eyes on her even though she refused to look at him.

"Where the hell are they taking us?" Bray asked.

"That's the least of our problems," Aria answered, avoiding either of their gazes to rest her palms upon the kitchen island. She lowered her head, feeling defeated.

"What?" Bray questioned. The sight of Aria lowering her head in defeat was terrifying to behold. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Bailey crossed his arms, a light grimace crossing his features. Remnants of the injury the medi-gel had only partly healed. It shined a light on another emotion warring within him—hopelessness. "It means, if this station is moving even half as fast as I think it is, it's going to be damn near impossible to get off of it."

A second or two passed in which silence reigned. Silence to take in the finality of what that meant. Once those seconds were gone, they were gone. Aria murdered them. She unloaded on the items standing upon the kitchen island, sliding them off and onto the floor with a hideous crash. Bailey had to jump back to avoid behind hit by a container of salt. She next went to work on the opposite counter, knocking over pots and pans. Utensils went flying.

The cacophony went on for the better part of a minute, potentially drawing every reaper within a ten-mile radius, but neither Bailey nor Bray were willing to come between Aria and her tirade. She ended it on her own, breathing heavily, the color of her skin cooling, her fingers clenching and unclenching until they finally relaxed and her breathing came under control. Her shoulders squared and her head came up.

"It means, Bray, that if we don't get moving, we're dead."

* * *

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	12. ONE Thing At A Time

**Sorry it has taken so long to get this chapter out. I'll try to get the next one out pretty quick.**

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 _ **MASS EFFECT: ONE**_

* * *

 _"One thing at a time, Jack."_

~Commander Shepard~

* * *

 **ONE Thing at a Time**

 **Earth, London**

 **Before Endgame**

 ** _S_** pindly salarian legs crested a mound of rubble that had once been the foundations of an turian diner. Below him, standing at attention, armed to the teeth and ready to go down fighting, stood the salarians of the Third Infiltration Regiment, and on the frontline was a soldier who had been at his side for many years. His second, Commander Rentola. He had a strong face, sublime and linear. The red markings on his brow, twining toward the crest of his horns, pronounced his heritage of family and brotherhood. Kirrahe was never more proud to be a part of the latter than he was today. He and the commander had fought through many a battle together and came out the victor. Kirrahe had no doubt they would do the same today.

Ensconced within a triangle of cover, buildings that had remained standing even as the city around them slowly fell apart, Kirrahe and his men were tentatively secure under a grey-white cloud of destruction. It passed over their heads, sprinkling them with a microscopic dust of concrete and glass. The sedimentary remains of a building that had given them a clear window forward in the fight to save Earth.

Soon, they would be on the move; they would step forward into that wasteland to forge a new path to victory. But, ready as they were, his men needed bolstering. They needed confidence, and they needed to know that their sacrifice, whatever shape it may take, would be worth the price paid.

Kirrahe paced the mound, hands behind his back, head held high. He turned to his waiting men, and began:

"You all know the mission and what's at stake. While this may not be our world, it is our galaxy. Today, humanity has asked for our help—and today, we will deliver. In this war, we are all citizens of the cosmos! There is no enemy we cannot defeat together, no threat we cannot neutralize, no challenge we cannot overcome! Someday, when the Reapers are just a memory, the nations of the galaxy will come together and remember this place— _this very ground_ —and say: 'The salarians were here! They did not fail! They did not falter, and they did not surrender!'"*

Every soldier raised his weapon as one, an unspoken boo-ya, a soundless battle cry. Kirrahe descended from his makeshift pedestal and moved between the line of soldiers.

"Move in the shadows. Take cover in smoke. Walk upon the dust cloud." Coming out on the opposite side, in the shadow of a still standing tree which gathered grey dust particles in its leaves, Kirrahe faced his soldiers. "Do not stop until you have vanquished your enemy. Give them only what they deserve—a quick and merciless death. Remember what they have taken from us."

Kirrahe took a step back. "Commander Rentola."

"Sir."

"Lead us out."

Rentola answered with a nod and moved the men forward at a jog. "We move now men. Remember the fallen."

There was a reason salarians made the best tactical teams and infiltration units. Litheness of body and less denseness of bone made for a lighter footstep. They could not crush rocks under their weight, as might a krogan, or crunch leaves underfoot, as might the heavy step of a human. Add to that, Salarian feet were small in comparison to both other species, their circumference taking up less space, which left more room for maneuverability. And this they did, slipping easily between trees within the three-sided concavity of these buildings, their feet making little sound upon grass or concrete. Rentola led them toward the center building, the innermost section of the triangle, where a porte-cochere jutted into the ruins of its courtyard like a hangnail. They slipped through, one at a time.

Be it from broken windows, or that it followed them inside, clung to their bodies like lonesome children, the dust cloud had already begun to permeate the innards of the building. Judging by the many empty tables, as well as the wood and glass bar on the other end, Kirrahe had guessed this to be a pub, or it had been at one time. No longer. It had become a haven for weary soldiers. They had sheltered here in the shadows, close to the coming battle, gathering their strength and strategizing their plan of attack. One half of that plan was complete. The other half waited, and though he knew it would be quick, it would not be easy.

"Commander," he called ahead. The soldiers had gathered at the exit, two tall oak doors bordered in an arch of stained glass. Odd, shimmering colors ringed the men, lit by the dwindling orange flames across the street. He felt as though he had stepped out of time and into another world. The world of Sherlock Holmes, perhaps. Kirrahe resisted a smile. He wondered, would Holmes have approved of his strategy?

Rentola met him through the gathering of soldiers. "Orders, sir."

"You know your orders, Commander," Kirrahe said, patting Rentola's shoulder. "Take your places on the battlefield, but do not commence attack until I've given the word."

"Yes, sir."

Kirrahe watched their stealthy march out of doors until they had all dispersed into the flame-lit night. Though he had little time for contemplation, he stood a moment, marveling at the stone arch, the wooden doors and antiqued doorknobs. Such a thing did not exist on his world. Doors with handles you had to twist in order to open them? Who on Sur'Kesh had ever heard of it? Even his soldiers had looked to him for advice when first they encountered the oddity of the doorknob. A pity everything was in ruins and he had not made plans to visit before the Reapers came. Everything that was old London had fallen and it would never be rebuilt again, not in this fashion and not with the lure of its history and romanticism.

With a sorrowful shake of his head, Kirrahe turned away, hoping at least the stained glass would survive, though he doubted it. He made his way toward the bar, ignoring the bottles of alcohol that lined the shelves wreathed in ash and dust. His focus was on the door to the left of it. He reached it, turned the much beloved doorknob like an old pro and entered a small room. Metal shelves, stocked with small crates of goods filled the interior.

When first he'd entered this room, it had been clean, organized and free of debris. In the interim, dust particles must have made their way under the door, or…no, not dust. Salt. It was everywhere. And other spices local to Earth. Cinnamon. Cloves. Nutmeg. The room was awash in their scent. Shelves had fallen and spilled the contents of crates all over the floor.

Kirrahe narrowed his eyes at the culprits of this disaster. They stood center of the room, VR helmets in their hands and expressions of awe-struck shock on their faces.

"Mission successful, I assume," the major asked.

Mouth softly agape, salt sprinkling her auburn hair and spices dusting her tattooed skin, Jack almost smiled. "That was too fucking real, Major."

"It can be as real as your mind makes it."

Jack chuffed. If her mind had made it any more real, she'd be dead as varen shit. The roar of brutes still echoed in her hear, the ground still felt unsteady beneath her feet, and the flesh of her neck stung where the husk's claws had, and yet had not, pierced her. She didn't like to think what might have happened if she hadn't ripped the helmet off her head, and off her two wards as well, before the building's final collapse. Would they have been crushed to death simply because it was what their minds believed?

"I've never experienced anything like that in my life," Prangley, coated in a fine spray of confectioner's sugar, said. His voice was shaky. He was probably thinking the same thing.

"Yeah," Rodriguez agreed. "It's like we were really there, _inside_ the building. I actually _felt_ the trigger underneath my thumb."

Jack bopped her on the arm. Cinnamon flew from her arm and onto the floor. " _It is_ underneath your thumb, dummy."

Rodriguez looked down at the triggering device in her hand and smiled sheepishly. "Oh yeah."

Jack, proud as a mamma whose kid just came home with a straight-A report card, wrapped an arm around the girl. "Damn good job, Rodriguez." She bopped Prangley this time and shot him a lopsided grin. "You too."

"You _all_ did well, Jack," Kirrahe said. "You've given us a window, and now we must breach it. The time for fun and games is over."

"Shit, you call _that_ fun and games?" Her mind was still alive with the memories of running down a street she hadn't truly set foot on, ducking through rubble, eyeing dead bodies and the sensation of falling through the air. It had all been so real and yet none of it was. At least not for she, Rodriguez and Prangley. The Reaper's children had certainly felt every crushing blow. She and her team had come away unscathed; mind blown, but unscathed. Jack held the VR helmet out. "This baby puts the Armax Arsenal to shame."

"It takes a fine mind, honed for battle, to withstand its realistic pressures. Thusly, we've not made it publically available."

"When this is all over, I want one." She could just picture her and Shepard going one on one with this puppy. Would need a good open location, though. This little room was certainly not fit for virtual reality, based on the mess they made. "Consider it payment, for saving your ass."

Kirrahe could no longer resist a grin. "When this is all over, I'll give you two."

"Damn right."

"But now for the real fight. Pack this away. We move in five."

Jack wasn't quite over the shock of her VR experience. It was hard to put into perspective that the entire mission had taken place inside this little room, and that the mutations had been chasing holographic projections. They had never been in any danger at all, but man, she had _felt_ in danger of being pancaked under a brute's foot. Hell, she'd felt the ground shake under her feet with every pounding step those monsters took. Now they had to go back out there. This time it would be real.

There was an upside, though. Jack reached over her shoulder and hefted her submachine gun. She had a weapon and she had her biotics back. No more pretending, no more conjuring imaginary enthrallment artifacts as though she were some mythic construct like Merlin or Gandalf. She was Jack, a human female with biotics that had been forged in the hell of torture. Time for some carnage.

"All right, boys and girls. You heard the major. Get it stowed."

A chorus of 'yes, ma'ams' and Jack followed Pebbles out of the storage room. Shaking the salt out of her hair, she stopped at the clear sound of each granule hitting the floor at her feet. "It's too quiet. I don't like it."

"You're instinct is on point, Jack," the major said, staring into the ghostly light of the stained glass windows, which gave the pebbled surface of his skin a colorful hue. "Ours was not the only decisive win in the battle to take back Earth. While you and your team were clearing our path, someone else took out the cannon to the east."

"That's what I'm talking about. Who did it? Krogans? Asari?"

"Hard to say, but word has filtered down through comm chat that Commander Shepard is groundside."

"Holy shit! Shepard's on Earth?!"

He nodded. "I can't think of anyone more willing to waltz so deep into enemy territory, can you?"

She smirked. "Yeah, except for us." She thought differently, though. If wanted to take out a Reaper, you didn't call a salarian tactical team with a few biotics tagging along for show. You call the only one known for beating the odds at every turn, the only one who had the reputation for having taken down a Reaper, _twice_. The thought alone that Shepard was groundside was enough to give Jack hope to keep going, hope to think they might actually win this thing. She kept it hidden, though. Better for Pebbles to see the stoic, hard-as-nails biotic she presented to the galaxy.

"So, what's our next move, Major? Anymore Sherlock Holmes twists I should know about?"

Kirrahe laughed. "No, but it worked, did it not? We took out a small army. I do believe Holmes, _and_ Commander Shepard, would have appreciated my little ruse. Then again, Holmes may have found my strategy to be more Watsonian than Holmesian, I fear."

Prangley and Rodriguez slipped through the storage room door, VR equipment stowed.

"But enough of my musings," Kirrahe said. "We have a job to finish. I think you'll be pleased with my plan of attack this time, Jack."

And she was.

The four of them moved out onto the streets of London, camouflaged by smoke and the dust clouds of the Vauxhall Bridge Road building they had rigged to collapse, and capturing dozens of Reaper hordes within its destruction. Diminishing their numbers meant they didn't have to separate as they had inside Battersea Park. This made Jack happy. Separation meant more chances for her kids to get hurt or worse. She knew there was always the chance that one or both of them might not make it out of this war alive. Hell, her own head was on the same chopping block, but she couldn't see needlessly putting any of them in harm's way. Working together kept them all safe, and it would make the job of retaking the cathedral easier.

Their target was an entrance to the church off Ambrosden Avenue, but there was plenty flack to wade through in order to get there.

Four concrete steps down from the pub set them on Francis Street, with Ambrosden to their right. A hop, skip and a jump, right? But in front of them, spilling out onto the street in a crumble of red brick and masonry, was the remains of the cathedral's choir school. A nearly three hundred year old construction five stories high, reduced to rubble in a matter of minutes. They had not seen it happen, but by the look of it, there could be no other explanation. Several well placed aerial strikes, no doubt. What remained were jagged brick walls, stabbing like serrated knives into the air. At the left rear entrance, one strangely lonesome column stood holding up nothing. The rest was a shatter of glass from its many windows, broken red bricks, crumbled roofs and a thick, heavy black smoke.

Jack would as soon go around it to the right, cut onto Ambrosden with ease, but Pebbles, the Sherlock Holmes wannabe, barreled across the street and right into a smoking fissure.

 _Shit._

"Holy hell," Prangley whispered beside her, his voice carrying overmuch in the loss of the distant cannon's incessant droning. "Is he serious?"

Salarians were all about stealth. Jack got it. Stealth got you close to the enemy, kissing distance close. You could slit a throat or ram a knife between shoulder blades before your enemy even knew you were there. A good tactic, and Jack was sure it did the job, but she had always preferred a straight up fight to sneaking around. What she wouldn't give to run headlong at a throng of cannibals and hit them with a shockwave. That's what Jack called fun. She'd bide her time. Fun was coming.

Jack looked over her shoulder at Prangley. "Don't waste breath on complaints. This is the real deal, boys and girls. No more VR helmets. We do this or we die. You with me?"

"Yes, ma'am," they replied in unison, though Jack was pretty sure she heard their doubt in stereo.

"Let's move."

Stepping cautiously through rubble, when what she really wanted was to get the party started, Jack followed Pebbles into the fissure of brick and smoke. Instinctually, she grimaced, shielding her eyes from the smoke and holding her breath, wishing she'd been smart enough to bring along a breathing apparatus. Had she known they'd be camouflaging through smoke, she would have.

On the other side, Jack opened one eye and then another. It wasn't as bad as she thought…and yet, it was.

Smoke-wise, they weren't suffering. She could breathe with minimal hindrance. Pockets of fire continued to crackle and burn, consuming the last remnants of wooden fixtures and hanging textiles. Instead of filling the room, the smoke went up and out through a roof that wasn't there; up to mingle with the gathering clouds above. What took her breath away was the hellish scene before her. The school had been obliterated. The jagged and teetering brick structure on the outside concealed the hell within. There was nothing left—not wall or roof or choir stall or any modern amenity the school may have acquired over the years. The only thing standing were the charred remnants of stone partitions, and here or there rectangular doorways where wooden doors might have once barred entrance. Nothing but smoke and blackness and ruination met Jack's eyes as far as she could see.

 _Kids weren't here,_ she told herself. _Please…if there's a God…please tell me kids weren't here when hell met this place._

Forcing her concentration on the sight of Pebbles crouched near what was left of a doorway, Jack made her way to him, careful in the darkness to watch her step. In this war, busting an ankle was a death sentence.

Crouching, she muffled a cough and whispered, "Plan."

"The rest of the team is just ahead. We'll pick our way through. Quiet. No noise. Picking off insurgents along the way. According to my schematics, there is a covered walkway connecting the school to the rear of the cathedral. We make for that."

"And what if it's not there?"

"Consider this a rehearsal for a stage play." Pebbles grinned. "We improvise."

Jack tried not to roll her eyes. He was loving every minute. "Great."

"We'll leave the three of you to bring up the rear."

"What about your cover? Isn't that what we're getting paid for?" Not really, but it was a good analogy.

"In essence, yes. However, one must take into account your species. Humans are unwieldy over uneven ground. Your feet are too big. You make too much noise."

"Bullshit," Jack said with smirk. "I once snuck up behind a krogan and smashed a bottle of vodka over his armor plated head."

"Krogan, yes. Thick heads, terrible auditory system. That alone speaks for itself. Give us time to make it through. When you three get there, it'll be just in time, I'm sure."

Jack huffed. "Whatever, boss. It'll be your funeral."

"We'll all experience it one day." Kirrahe patted her arm. "See you on the other side." He then disappeared through the doorway and into the smoke.

Prangley took his place near the doorway. "I've decided salarians are all insane."

"Yeah, you and me both."

Behind Jack, Rodriguez whispered, "We all are, aren't we? I mean, look at where we are. No one in their right mind would stay here."

Jack could only agree, but their situation being what it was, they had no other choice. No one was around to airlift them out, and even if the Cheerleader showed up to do just that, who's to say they wouldn't be shot down from the air…or worse, caught in the battle going on above the clouds. Despite their position, Jack found her mind and her vision going up there often, wondering what was happening and why. Shepard may not be up there anymore, but some serious shit was going down. She felt it as surely as she felt the charred ground under her feet. Was this the last push, the final countdown to the end? The exploding fireworks above told her it was. There were only two outcomes to such a scenario—relief or death, victory or defeat.

She could speak her beliefs to Prangley and Rodriguez, but what was the use planting too many seeds of hope where little was warranted? This was war. Better they feel the heavy panting of Death on the back of their necks than to see a shimmering angel of light before them. They needed to keep their focus on the task at hand.

Looking over a crumbling wall and through upwardly rising columns of smoke, Jack spotted flitting movement through the rubble. The STG unit were advancing, one salarian at a time. With crumbling partitions as cover, they silently stepped from one to another, slithering through the rubble with the ease of a constrictor.

"Okay," Jack said. "We follow their lead, move cover to cover, one at a time. Watch your footing but don't forget what's out there. Anything could be waiting in dark corners. Prangley, take point."

"You got it." He moved into the smoke.

"Rodriguez, you're next. I'll take the rear."

An anxious frown marred Rodriguez's face, but she nodded, waited for Prangley's next move and slipped into the smoke. Jack hovered near the opening, watching as Rodriguez slipped through columns of smoke and vanished. It was her move, her turn to vanish, but Jack hesitated. Not out of fear. Jack knew, no matter the outcome of this war, whatever was going to happen would happen. She couldn't control it. Still, her eyes went heavenward, taunt skin pulling at the numbered tattoo along her right jugular—6406—a number that meant nothing and everything to Jack. White blooms of light illuminated the heavy clouds from above. The fighting was intense. She couldn't see into the heavens. Jack didn't have that gift. She couldn't help but wonder who had the upper hand. On what end of the scale of war were they? How close to defeat? How close to victory?

" _One thing at a time, Jack."_

She could almost hear Shepard's voice. They had been on the Normandy when she said it. Every time Shepard came down to Jack's little hole in the wall, her nitch of relative peace (because there had been no peace within), just to 'check on her,' Jack would drill into the commander her need to go back to Pragia. She couldn't calm. She couldn't stop pacing the confines of the space, her own personal prison with two ways out if she needed it. Her body seemed to twitch with the itch to go back, to level the place, to show the Teltin Facility who she had become and that it couldn't hurt her anymore. But Shepard didn't go, not right away. She took Jack on other away missions—the collector ship, helping everyone else settle _their_ scores—but she waited on Jack. Let her simmer through it all. She hadn't seen it then, but Shepard had been conditioning her, teaching her what it meant to put another before yourself. It was a hard lesson, and Jack never truly understood it until she started working at Grissom Academy.

Jack would never say it out loud, not to anyone, but here in the ruined shadows of belief and reverence, she could say it to herself. Shepard was her own personal saint. She worshipped the ground she walked on without the outward displays—kneeling at her feet or kissing an emblem on a chain around her neck. Decking Shepard the first time she saw her on Academy grounds was as close to an outward act of worship as Jack would come. Raising her eyes heavenward was for Jack raising them in salute of Shepard. If not for her, she would not be here sacrificing her life to save another's.

 _One thing at a time,_ Jack now told herself. Extract the Enthrallment Team, then worry about Shepard. For now, her kids needed her.

Jack looked forward. Smoke obscured her vision. They were somewhere ahead. She needed to move.

 **EEE**

 _ **O**_ nce, Jack dreamed of returning to the Teltin Facility. Some part of her wanted to know…did it still stand? Had anyone survived? She thought not, but one never knew.

Long before she went back with Shepard, Jack had gone back in her mind. A fevered, hyperreal dream, where everything was as she remembered it. The long corridors, the wide windows, the antiseptic, insipid purity of the place; and in contrast, the delicious savageness of the jungle outside. Seen only through inch-thick glass, Jack had longed to let its wildness envelope her, wrap her in green leafy arms and swallow her, to become one with it. Everything that was wild within her would become part of the jungle and it with her. And when the time came, she and the jungle would encroach upon the facility, sending out tentacles of hardened vines, snaring struts and handrails, pulling, ripping foundations. Roots would burst through floors, vines through glass, hunting, seeking out the unworthy, the ones who hurt, the ones who enjoyed seeing her pain. Vines would twine around legs and arms and necks, breaking bones, squeezing out life. She would become the one who hurt, the one who enjoyed seeing _their_ pain. Her hatred would be what crushed the entire facility, crumpling it under the weight of vines and roots and growing trees, pulling it down into the ground until it didn't exist anymore.

Strange, that after so many years, on her return she would find the facility to have been nearly swallowed by Pragia's jungle. Roots had begun to pierce through the floor where trees began to grow. Vines snarled over its angular metal body and into the interior, working its way along corridors and over windows just as she'd seen in her dream, only much slower. If she had left it as it was, time might have eventually allowed the jungle to swallow the Teltin Facility, pulling it down in the ground where it didn't matter anymore.

Walking through its isolated interiors with Shepard (the Cheerleader somewhere not far behind, mumbling something about it not being Cerberus's fault), Jack had almost thought she could do that—leave the place to the jungle's whims, let her dream become reality. Only, it didn't work out like that. That idiot Aresh, thinking he could rebuild the damn place, bring it back to its former glory. The years, and his torturous childhood, had turned his brain to mush. Jack had felt it better to waste the place, keep it out of the hands of fools like Aresh, and at the same time, sate her need for revenge.

Funny, the way time changes things. At the time she had wanted to twist Miranda's neck every time she spoke. Time, and Miranda's decision to give Cerberus the finger, had gone and softened Jack's attitude to her. And Aresh? Seemed time had a healing effect, too. He'd given his life to save a shuttle full of children escaping a Reaper-controlled colony. What might have happened to those kids if Shepard hadn't stopped her from blowing his brains out right then?

Time had changed Jack, too. She wasn't the same person who stepped on board the Normandy straight from escaping the Blue Suns' prison. She often looked at that moment as a shift in her lifeline. She could have fought Shepard off, escaped on a shuttle or something, but where would she be? Not here, that's for sure. On the Normandy, she learned the meaning of friendship and commitment. No truer friends could a Psychotic Biotic have ever found than the people she met while she served with Shepard. Some of them had been lost to this war, given their lives for a greater cause. She could think of no better way to honor their sacrifice, than to risk a sacrifice of her own. If she had to give her life to save theirs, she would do it in a heartbeat.

As Jack beat a cautious path behind the salarian team, double-timing it just to keep up with them, she realized sacrifice might be her final outcome in this war…and she was okay with that. She hadn't lived as full a life as she might have wanted, but there were other kids out there who might not get the chance if she didn't offer the sacrifice. Soldiers, too. The very ones she beat a path to meet.

A few minutes in, and Jack took cover behind a smoking mound of…something. She listened, weapon ready for the start of battle or the moan of a husk waiting in the shadows. Stifling a cough, her eyes settled upon something rectangular that used to be white. She picked the fire-stained item out of the rubble, inspected its soft face, its careful lines and recognized it for what it was. The ivory key of a piano.

How many children's hands over the years had touched this very key? Jack gripped it in the palm of her hand, anger surging within like a rising tsunami, until a whisper farther ahead doused it as surely as if there had been rising water. Jack stowed the key in her pocket and craned her neck to listen. There was definitely a voice floating along the air, bouncing off pockets of fire and smoke.

Jack moved to the next cover and tried to place the voice, but no sooner than she heard it, a crack of rifle fire exploded the silence into pieces. _So much for salarian stealth,_ she thought, and bounded over the crumbling wall she'd hidden behind. A single shot became many, littering the air like firecrackers. The battle had begun. The ground too treacherous to run upon, Jack picked her way over rubble, passing ghostlike between columns of black smoke, only to stumble onto a scene more nightmarish than her dream.

An immense, rounded wall, stained black with soot, towered above her. A wall of brick with many arched windows that looked as if they'd been shattered, fused together and then returned to its place. A skycar leaned against one wall like a child's play thing. To her left, Jack barely made out a backdoor buried underneath a mound of rubble, and to her right was another pointed iron gate, designed to keep out the undesirables. It wasn't working.

An arched iron entrance crowned the gate, tall enough for a turian and wide enough for a krogan, but not for a brute. There was only one, surrounded by marauder cohorts, but one was enough. Jack watched it jump for the arched opening, every gorillian step shaking the ground. Salarian rifle shots, taken from the cover of rubble, rang off it with a clang and ricocheted bullets into the building behind it. They weren't making a dent. With one clawlike arm, it twisted the wrought iron from its moorings like silly string, ripping pointed post after post from the concrete ground. Each one went with a sucking pop. Jack heard them go, one by one, until the brute held the entire length of fencing in its monstrous hands. It tossed it over its shoulder where it came to a crash into the building behind, crumbling balconies littered with heat-withered potted plants.

With the salarians behind her, taking shelter in the choir school's rubble, the brute belched a subaqueous roar, sounding something like a drowning sea lion on steroids. The fence was gone. Nothing stood between her and the brute. Too late, Jack realized she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It charged.

Instinct took over as it had the day Shepard released her from the confines of the Blue Suns' prison. Jack didn't think. Jack only reacted. Weapon forgotten, her body glowing like a blowtorch from head to toe, biotic power punched from her fingertips. All her hatred went with it. The blow hit the brute square in the chest. It faltered, wobbled back two steps, righted itself and roared with such forced Jack felt the heat of it. She'd only made it angry. It charged again, and this time she had nothing left. She was done, finished.

Out of nowhere, her shoulder bloomed with an unflinching pain, and as though someone had punched her, she twisted, rocked backward, slammed into the hard ground just as another blue bolt raced over her head. It struck the charging brute with all the force of an aerial strike, knocking it hard enough against the church walls to shake lose the debris that had settled above. It rained down upon the momentarily disoriented brute while marauders and cannibals rushed into take its place. Shots rang over her head. Someone was reaching under her arms, pulling her to safety. Jack knew a warp shot when she saw one, and that one was much too powerful to have come from either Prangley or Rodriguez. Jack looked up and saw the blue face of an asari justicar above her, an asari she knew well.

"Samara?"

Hardly had the recognition settled in her mind, when a roar almost as fierce as that of the brute came from somewhere above, and a flash of bulky metallic armor descended out of the sky like a wrathful god.

" **I AM KROGAN!"**

Jack knew only one teenage ninja turtle who made that statement on a regular basis—Grunt. His heavy krogan body landed upon the brute's with all the weight of a skycar, toppling it to the ground, and snuffing out what was left of its horrific life. He then ran headlong into a marauder, careening it sideways while the butt of his shotgun found the head of a cannibal. The boom of a sniper rifle sounded from the parapet above. One marauder went down, then another. A pull field yanked three husks from their feet. They went flying into the smoke of the downed choir school. Behind them, another cannibal met the barrel of a shotgun face to face. _BOOM!_

Jack gained her feet, pulling on the arm of the leather clad asari. "Careful, Jack," Samara said above the crack of a sniper rifle.

"Careful, my ass," she cried, ignoring the rising pain in her shoulder, and pointed. "Look!"

On the westernmost roof, a dozen or so husks were clambering across its surface like marching ants. She had only begun to make out the bobbing of their bald heads. Their attack vector would bring them dangerously close to the parapet. The two taking cover behind its low wall wouldn't know how dangerous until it was too late. She and Samara shared a glance, then a nod.

Pain or no pain, Jack rushed over the mound of cover behind which the salarians hid, the justicar close on her heals. Prangley stood to the rear of the salarians' position, creating a barrier.

"Where's Rodriguez?" Jack called as she passed him.

"I don't know! I thought she was with you!"

"Dammit! Stay with them!"

"Yes, ma'am." This time, she heard not doubt, but worry. Where the hell was Rodriguez?

"Jack, this way!"

Samara slipped past her, the once leather outfit Jack remembered on board the Normandy now plated with armor. Heals and all, the justicar jumped onto the rubble of the choir school that had come to rest against the cathedral's south entrance. It butted up against the wall at enough of an angle to climb. Jack and Samara made use of subtle biotic boosts to parkour up its surface, reaching for delicate handholds on a sloping buttress. The buttresses encircled the entire fifth dome of the church, each replete with their own a-framed stone roof. Samara reached the first one, then dove headfirst into the first arch of the parapet.

Jack followed seconds after, coming to a rolling stop only to find a pistol jammed between her eyes. A dark face stared back, full lips set in a grimace, ready to pull the trigger. Then the eyes widened and the pistol drew back.

" _Jack!"_

Jack huffed in relief. "Awesome to see you, too, Jacob."

"Shit, I coulda shot you!"

"Time for pleasantries later, people," came an accented voice from the western end of the parapet. Sniper rifle resting on the shoulder, one eye to the scope, Zaeed pulled the trigger without a flinch.

Samara jogged toward the edge nearest the battle-hardened mercenary, and mounted the ledge like a woman contemplating suicide. "You've more than pleasantries headed your way." She looked at the three of them long enough to say, "Stay here," and then she vaulted off the ledge onto the next buttress. Jack was just about to protest being left behind when she and Jacob both caught movement on the opposite side, this time on the eastern wall. Husk heads were topping the ledge, kvetching like hungry zombies.

Vaulting to the domed parapet's next ledge, Samara stepped nimbly over the barrel of Zaeed's rifle to the ledge of a connecting tower. The roof was not far away now, and it was crawling with husks. She biotically snatched the first few to reach the edge with a deft hand. They somersaulted off the side, impaling themselves below upon what remained of the wrought iron fence. Her way was clear. With the grace of a ballet dancer, her booted feet taking two long steps across the narrow ledge toward the roof's edge, she leapt. Her hands glowed a neon blue where they connected with the war-weathered stone edge, boosting herself acrobatically up and over the roof's edge. Her feet came to a sturdy landing before a dozen or more husks. They had halted their forward movement almost as if in awe of the justicar's grace and poise in the face of their madness.

Samara faced her quarry, a blue biotic glow enveloping her like vapor. She considered their presence without indignance or hatred. These were once humans, individuals with lives, families and a sense of purpose. She felt sadness for the loss of their humanity, all that once made them what they were. It was only right to extend them mercy.

Jack didn't know about extending the bastards any mercy, but she sure didn't hold any doubts about blowing their brains out the back of their heads. Though, the sight of faintly glowing husks somersaulting overhead to hit the ground below with a solid smack told Jack that Samara hadn't extended them anything they didn't deserve. She and Jacob had beaten back their share of the creepy crawlies while the justicar extended her brand of mercy. The ones attempting to gain entrance over the ledge and onto the parapet had already met the ground. Now, she and Jacob were busily plucking them one at a time off the cathedral's eastern side. Their numbers were diminishing.

On the ground below, a fine example of krogan blood-rage was on display for everyone to witness. Though only the salarian STG unit, Prangley, and Zaeed in his sniper's nest were on hand to view it. Grunt rampaged through the onslaught of marauders and cannibals without a single thought to life or limb. Headbutts, rifle smashes, the ripping of appendages—nothing was off the table. By the time he was through, Grunt's armored krogan body was covered in gore and a former turian-turned-marauder's arm had become a cudgel gripped within his massive fingers. He was currently beating its former owner over the head with it, when a voice rang down from above.

"I think you killed it, you goddamn crazy krogan," Zaeed said with a hearty laugh.

Grunt gave it two more good whacks before finally slinging the tattered arm at the pile of carcasses around him. "They're never dead enough to suit me!"

With the last of the husks dead or dying on cathedral grounds, Jack descended the ledge and leaned against the inside of the buttress. Now that the battle had lulled, it felt like someone had just hit her with a sledge hammer. Her right shoulder throbbed like a son of a bitch, but her pride hurt worse. It had been a long time since a bullet pierced her shields. A dumb move got her shot the first time, and a dumb move got her shot this time. What the hell was she thinking, running headlong into battle like that?

 _Oh yeah._ Jack smirked inwardly. _I like that shit._

But it was dumb. It wasn't just about herself anymore. She had others to look after. Speaking of…Jack made a move to stand on her own two feet and look over the ledge for Rodriguez, but the pain in her shoulder screamed _NO_. She fell back against the buttress, blood draining from her face.

"Now, that's never a good sign," Zaeed said as he approached, the barrel of his weapon resting upon his shoulder and a curious grin on his hardened face. "Subject Zero in a swoon?"

"Kiss my ass, Massani," Jack rasped.

"Wouldn't wanna risk it. You'd probably enjoy it too much." Zaeed laughed at his own wit and the disdaining sneer Jack threw his way. "Let's have a look," he added, pointing to her shoulder.

Jacob jumped down and wiped the sweat from his brow. "That's the last of'em. Jack, you okay?"

"I'll live," she said through a grimace while Zaeed pulled back her tattered jacket to reveal a bloody wound. "Guess that's what I get for refusing to wear armor."

"It's ugly, but it's clean," Zaeed said. "Nothing a little medi-gel can't handle." He activated his omni-tool, dispensed with a dose of healing and smiled at his patient. "Ah, Jack. It's damn good to see you."

Jack had to smile. She could have used the same phraseology on the merc—ugly, but clean. A deeply embedded scar winded along the right side of his face, from forehead to cheek like a ragged capital C. It left the right eye permanently damaged and fogged over. Zaeed Massani looked as scary as he actually was. But he had a jovial, if gruff, temperament that Jack had always admired. If they held no other similarities, they certainly were the only two heavily tatted and most badass former crewmembers of the Normandy.

Jack took Zaeed's raised hand and slapped it some skin. "You too, Massani."

The clomp of heels brought the three of them around. Samara stood just inside the parapet. "We should get inside before more arrive."

Jacob nodded. "Samara's right. We just raised one hell of a ruckus."

"You?" Jack said, pushing up from the buttress and righting her jacket. "I just imploded a building. Every Reaper in town knows we're here."

"Is that what the hell that was?" Zaeed asked. "Damn."

"We must hurry." Samara waved them toward an open door, but Jack halted. She turned instinctively, her thoughts on Prangley and Rodriguez, Pebbles and the rest of the STG unit on the ground (not to mention her favorite krogan bad boy).

"Don't worry, Jack," Samara added. "Grunt will see them to safety through a ground floor entrance."

Jack acquiesced and slipped through the old, wooden door behind Zaeed. Every single door on this old building was made of thick, heavy oak. It was a wonder the ground forces hadn't broken through them. But as she watched Samara seal the opening, she understood why. The door and the reinforcing wall around it lit with a quick sparkle of light and an audible hum. A mass effect field. She should have known.

"Huh," Jack mumbled, impressed.

Jacob nodded. "The church had'em installed years ago. On the windows, too. Those puppies weren't getting inside the cathedral no matter how hard they tried."

Samara led them on a descent upon winding medieval staircases. Jack had never really seen anything so old, and yet so amazingly well-preserved. Modernity intruded in the form of lighting, but it felt as if she had been transferred back in time. Any moment, a knight in full regalia would march up to meet them, inform Samara of their state of readiness and of the wounded. Instead, they met another wooden door which opened onto a sight that Jack wouldn't be able to compare to anything else in her whole life.

If the cathedral felt like a brick and stone monstrosity from the outside, inside Jack saw the glorious belly of the beast. The door from which they'd exited entered alongside the foot of the alter. The richest marble covered every inch. From the walls to the white steps and the six golden columns of the baldachin that surrounded the high alter, to the Archbishop's throne sitting off to the side in a glaringly reverential position. She stood in awe of its beauty and the craftsmanship involved in bringing it to life, but stricken by its ostentation. As opposed to Jack's colorful tattoos, the disparate marbled surroundings were like meaningless tattoos. A red rose on the back of the neck, or behind the ear, because it's cute. Jack frowned at the throne. She knew little of any culture's religious practices, nor did she care to know, but a throne didn't equate with the worship of an all-powerful deity in her estimation. Only men needed thrones.

Samara led them unceremoniously upon the marbled steps and before the golden columns. The high alter, draped in a swank emerald green cloth, seemed to fill the whole of the space. On its surface stood a gilded cross and six gilded candelabras. Was this where they placed their objects of veneration?

With no priests or bishops or God knew what else to stop her, Jack took the five red-carpeted steps toward the alter. She removed the ivory piano key, stained like a smoker's tooth, from the satchel on her belt and placed it upon the alter before the cross. She didn't exactly know why, or even what it might accomplish, but it felt right.

She turned to find her three former crewmates watching her. They didn't ask, and for that she was glad. Descending the steps, Jack sensed the enormity of the place in the echo of her shoes. Little light penetrated into the darkness of the cathedral except for what had been stationed around the alter. Beyond, dipping into the gathering darkness was the nave. What Jack could see of it was a disaster of toppled chairs and crashed chandeliers. Their collective breaths floated into the nothingness above. However high the ceiling reached, Jack couldn't see it. The light wouldn't reach that far. She felt dwarfed, and maybe even a little humbled.

"It is magnificent, is it not?" Samara whispered as Jack rejoined her.

Jack couldn't avoid a sneer. Save for her experience at the altar, she didn't know whether to get down on her knees or spit on the floor. "I guess if you say so."

Zaeed harrumphed. "Kinda makes you wanna get down on your knees and beg forgiveness for all the shitty things you've done, eh?"

Jack didn't say a thing in answer. She merely tossed the sneer his way and raised an eyebrow at him.

He smirked. "I was joking."

"You'd better be."

Samara smiled knowingly. "I thought only asari temples were as lustrously arrayed. Humanity has proved me wrong again."

"Eh, I'm with Jack," Jacob said, not hiding his disdain. "Catholicism is the seat of all religious and racial bigotry throughout human history." The three of them looked at him curiously. "Hey, I can say that. My family's Catholic. And it's in the history vids."

"History or not," Samara said, "one can admire the architecture. I imagine Thane might have appreciated it were he still here."

"I'm not so sure," Jacob said. "Thane was a naturalist. His appreciation was for the land, the air, the water."

"You are right, Jacob. Forgive me."

"Nothing to forgive." Jacob's brows drew together. If his biotics had given him the gift of fire, his eyes might have begun to smolder. "God damn Kia Leng," he said with a hard voice.

"Nah," Jack said with a shake of her head. "Shepard damned Kai Leng."

"Amen, brother." Zaeed produced a flask, took a swig and passed it on to Jacob. "To Thane."

"And Mordin," Jacob said before kicking back a swallow and passing the flask on to Jack.

Jack added, "And Legion," before taking her own honorary gulp.

Samara rejected the drink, but she did speak, and when she did, her voice was as light as the whisper of a shadow. "Guide them, Kalahira, set them on the distant shore of the infinite spirit."

Jack figured this was as close as the four of them might get to a collective prayer. She hadn't gotten the chance to know Thane as well as some of the other members of the crew. She'd seen him as aloof, untouchable. He intimidated her in a way. Time, after the collector mission, had separated them all, but news of his death had touched Jack in ways she never expected. She had grieved his loss. Maybe not with tears or crying as some might have, but with anger and a desire for retribution. She'd taken it out on the battlefield. She left the retribution where it rightfully belonged—with Shepard.

"Cerberus bastards," she whispered under breath. "Back to business, boys and girls. We have Reapers breathing down our ass and you guys have a mission to complete…"

The slamming of a door and a flurry of voices bounced off stone cathedral walls.

"And a company to make safe," Samara completed.

Jack thought of something Pebbles said at the start of their mission. _Leave the dead..make haste to those who are still living._ Never had truer words been spoken. A man of deep emotion, Thane was. He felt more than all of them combined, but he would have understood. Good or evil, the dead were at peace. It was the living who still needed their help.

Following after Samara, who had grabbed a lantern seated upon a short-backed wooden chair with a green cushion, Jack, Jacob and Zaeed rushed down the steps into the nave where their boots now clomped upon a wooden floor. Samara was their lone beacon of light. Her descent into darkness illuminated more marble columns flanking either side of the nave and on toward the front of the cathedral. Jack could just barely see the many windows at the cathedral's entrance. The battle taking place in the heavens above flickered hypnotically through them. Jack ignored it and let her kids be her focus.

Samara took a sharp left turn toward a room beyond the columns. Church-goers could have thrown a hundred descriptive words at her to describe the room she found herself in and none of it would have meant a thing to Jack. All she cared about was finding her kids and making sure they were okay. They weren't kids. Jack knew that. They were adults, and this war had made them grown up fast. That didn't change anything for Jack. She still felt like a mom waiting for her kids to disembark the shuttle that took them back and forth to school each day. Problem was, the battlefield was a rough place for lessons, and sometimes the kids didn't come back home.

The first one to appear out of the darkness, illuminated by Samara's lantern, was a gore-covered Grunt. He laughed through a blocky-toothed grin and spread his arms in a welcoming embrace.

"Jack! My favorite painted human!"

Jack stepped back, her eyes on the entrails draped over Grunt's shoulders like decoration. "Touch me and I'll break your pretty krogan neck."

Anyone else might have taken offense, but all her harsh words accomplished with Grunt was to tickle his funny bone. He issued a few harsh barks that, for a krogan, was meant as laughter.

"Jack, I missed you."

Despite his foul appearance, Jack smiled. "Yeah, yeah! Now get away from me."

"Go clean yourself up, you crazy ass reptile," Zaeed said, pulling on the krogan's arm. He instantly regretted it. With a mumbled curse, he wiped his hand on a nearby drape.

Jack's gaze went back to the rest of the team entering upon Samara's light. Salarians. A few had luminaries of their own. They bobbed in the darkness with every step, shining in her eyes, blinding her until a familiar face appeared out of the crowd—a baby face. Commander Rentola, looking haggard, gave her a wordless nod of respect and moved on with his men. She could have asked the million-credit question, but the answer would soon play itself out for good or ill, so why waste the breath and risk looking desperate. She busied her mind counting lithe, but tired salarian bodies as they passed. They were one short.

Damn.

She searched the parting crowd for three familiar faces and in through the darkness came a three-headed silhouette. Two were clearly supporting a third in the middle, and only one of those heads was salarian-shaped. Jack approached with an audible sigh of relief, and regretted it as quickly as Zaeed had regretted touching Grunt. Lantern light fell not upon Prangley and Kirrahe supporting an injured Rodriguez. The third person wasn't Rodriguez at all, but an unfamiliar face, a man in the Alliance armor of an N7 paladin sentinel. Armor battered, one side of his face reddened as though the sun had come down to meet him, he was bleeding from every place imaginable.

Jack didn't care. _"Who the hell are you?"_

Prangley and Kirrahe looked up at her, but the man in question looked away, grimacing in excruciating pain.

"By the goddess," Samara whispered.

"Holy shit!" This alternate venerative exclamation came from Jacob. He sprinted past Jack to relieve Prangley of his duty. "Hicox! We thought you were dead, man!"

"He stands at Death's door," Kirrahe said as Jack brushed past them. "Hurry, we must get him stable."

A pained voice asked, "The girl? Where's the girl?" It must have been the Alliance soldier, but Jack didn't look back. She didn't know who this guy was and she didn't care. She took Prangley's arm and inspected him.

"You okay?"

Prangley waved her off, fighting for breath. "Don't worry about me. Rodriguez…"

"Where is she?"

He looked behind him, squinting into the dark. "She was right behind us. This way." Prangley took off at a trot, Jack following him into a darkened stone corridor which lead toward their place of entry into the cathedral. They found her slumped against the wall, faint flickering light washing upon an ashen face. The girl looked as close to death's door as the solider.

Jack took the girl's face in her hands while Prangley inspected her. "Luciana, dammit. Look at me. Are you injured? Are you hurt?"

The girl's skin was as cold as ice. Jack felt sick. Had she ever used her first name before?

Rodriguez breathed. "I'm—I don't—"

"She looks okay," Prangley said. "Cuts and bruises, but…" Prangley removed the hand Rodriguez was holding to her abdomen. Even in the wan light, there was no mistaking the crimson stain in her palm, filling the creases and pooling in the center like a stigmata.

Prangley hitched in a breath. "Oh shit. Oh Luce, no."

Grissom Academy uniforms were an amalgam of school colors. Black and crimson with bright white in the stitching of the school's emblem. Even with good light, they might not have been able to differentiate the stain that had soaked into Rodriguez's uniform, but they could see the liquidized reflection of blood as it seeped into the girl's lap.

"Oh God," someone else said.

Took a few seconds for Jack to realize the words were her own. They had sounded from some far off place, unreal, detached from the Jack she knew. Her legs turned to jelly. She tingled intangibly from head to toe. She didn't want to name it, but she knew what it was— _fear_ , unadulterated, unfiltered by anything, not even her renowned rage.

* * *

 ***Spoken by Kirrahe in-game just before the final battle on Earth, but only if Wrex doesn't make it. Thought it would make a nice entry here since my gameplay didn't include Wrex dying. Wrex is too awesome to die!**


	13. ONE by ONE

**I am so terribly sorry it's taken me this long to upload the next chapter. Life has basically done a hit and run** **on me. I'm trying to get things back on track, so I hope you can forgive my absence and enjoy this chapter. It's a long one. About 30 pages on** **Microsoft Word.**

* * *

 _ **MASS EFFECT: ONE**_

* * *

 _"The universe is a dark place."_

~Thane Krios~

* * *

 **ONE BY ONE**

 **Citadel Embassies – After Endgame**

 _ **"…i**_ f we don't get moving, we're dead."

That's what she'd told them in a time that seemed like forever ago. Strange thing was, she thought they already were. Hadn't they already been through this fight and lost?

Husks everywhere, as far as the eye could see. No visible space on the ground. They kept coming in endless wave after wave, like a tsunami. But they fought the husks, and the pain, and the fatigue, and the sweat in their eyes. Blow for blow, they stood their ground. To her right, Bailey, fought gracefully at her side as if he'd always belonged there. Perhaps they could never truly call one another "friends," not in this life or any other, but between them, there was a mutual respect.

And to her left, a face she thought she might never see again, but here he was. Four-eyed and ugly, his only saving grace being his unwavering devotion, Bray fought like an animal in a cage. She loved him a little, she guessed. No, not with any sort of romantic love. (Don't be ridiculous. She would have to be terminally desperate to hook up with a batarian! They were as ugly as an elcor's ass, or an elcor's face. Didn't really matter, because an elcor's face was pretty much the same as his ass.) This was a different sort of love. The love you might feel for a good dog, maybe. Bray was like that. Fiercely loyal, no matter what. He would give his all for her.

But, hadn't he already? Hadn't they all? So, what was the point?

Something was not right here. This wasn't the way it had happened. Aria dropped her weapon. She stopped fighting, and the most surrealistic thing happened. One by one, the husks came to a standstill. If there were crickets on the Citadel, she might have heard one chirp. Instead, the sound of their collective breaths filled the dark space around them. She watched their chests heave in tandem. Inhalation. Exhalation. They were as one.

This was a dream. Had to be. Husks just didn't do that.

Out the corner of her eye, Bailey must have been thinking the same thing. She saw him take a step backward, behind her. He was as ready to leave the nightmare behind as she was. But to her left, Bray merely looked at her and gave her a toothy grin she couldn't understand at all. Then, he walked toward the throngs of husks.

"Bray, what are you doing?" she called out, but he didn't seem to hear her. Or maybe it was that her lips hadn't moved at all. Or perhaps she had never spoken aloud even though she thought she had. Whatever the reason, Bray wasn't listening. He seemed to have his own agenda. Into their throngs he went, slipping into their numbers like a ghost, but the husks were not fooled. They turned on him, attacked him. He didn't not protest or yell or fight back, even as they began devouring him. Aria could do nothing but stand there. His feet didn't move. Her mouth couldn't scream. Her weapon wouldn't shoot. She fought with every ounce of strength within her. Summoning her biotic powers, she pulled at the force holding her in her place, grappled with it until it gave her back the control she deserved over her own body, but in the end, it relented only on her voice. With it, Aria bellowed…

" _ **BRAY!"**_

She came upright on the couch with such force she nearly tumbled from it. Fresh pain bloomed in her left leg. She cried out, clutching her wound in both hands, gritting her teeth against the pain. The realization that she was no longer in a dream, but lying on a comfortable couch within the Council's chambers hit her like a skycar at full speed. This was the present. This was now, and it wasn't just Bailey and Tevos watching over her in a vulnerable state. There seemed to be more eyes in this room than had access to her in Afterlife. Seemingly every lesser member of the council hovered nearby, from turian to elcor. Faces she knew. Faces she despised. Faces she didn't know at all. Every one of them had turned her way. Every one of them were looking at the pitiful and injured Aria T'Loak, ruler of Omega, Pirate Queen, etc., etc., and all the other meaningless titles she had acquired over the years, none of them specifically created by herself.

She had cried out in pain and in fear, but mostly anger. She was still angry, burning with it in point of fact. Which made the faces, staring at her as though they were staring at an apparition, startled by its inexplicability, all the more hated.

" _What?"_ she yelled at them. "You want something to look at? Look in the mirror, and you'll see a pathetic coward."

That did the trick. One by one, they all turned away. All except for one face that slipped through the crowd and came running to her side. Tevos.

"Aria? Are you all right?"

Aria took in a breath as if she had been holding it for hours. Out of all the bad that had happened, there was one good thing—her last memory had been...

"Just a dream."

"Well, after all you've been through—"

"Do me a favor, Tevos," Aria said through tight lips, pushing Tevos's comforting hand away. "Stop coddling me. I'm not a child and we haven't been mates for hundreds of years. I've _'been through'_ this because you kept me here."

Despite every scathing word, Tevos did not flinch. She maintained her typical, bureaucratic composure. "And where would I be if I had let you leave? Answer me that, Aria."

"You'd be dead." Aria did flinch either, but she did smile her typical, caustic smile.

Tevos sighed. "Spare me your Queen Bitch of the Universe routine. We patched you up. You should be grateful. How do you feel?"

"Better," Aria answer, looking away. "What happened?"

"We've mended the tear in your artery, injected stimulants to increase blood production as well as pain reduction. Medi-gel has stopped the bleeding. You should be able to walk."

"I'll be the judge of that."

Swinging her legs off the edge of the couch, Aria carefully regained her feet. She had always despised being injured. It was the same as being a cripple or mentally retarded. People treated you differently than they had before. They stared and ogled. Thankfully, she had remedied that. She had asserted her authority over her space, the part of her that was still Omega, and the people respected it enough to stay out of her way. Yet, their presence was still too much. She felt the flitting of their eyes in her direction like tiny tangible touches. They were hard to ignore, particularly when she put pressure on the leg, felt pain bloom there again and stumbled. Hushed, gossipy whispers reached her ears across the space of the small room.

Tevos caught her, but the indignance of their stares became magnified in Aria's mind. Another minute longer and she would explode.

Pushing herself away from the strength of Tevos, Aria stood on her own two feet. "Last I heard this station was on a collision course with Earth." Her voice, seemingly bigger than the station and more pronounced than their whispers, filled the room. "Don't any of you sorry bastards have something better to do?"

"Sorry bastards is right," said a familiar voice. Aria turned to see Bailey walking up to her with a smile on his face. "This tightwad bunch wouldn't know how to light a fire with a match in one hand and a ball of paper in the other."

"Commander," Tevos reprimanded.

Bailey shrugged. "Well, it's true. How are you feeling, Aria?"

Aria couldn't help but give the commander a salty grin. Their time left on this station was probably numbered down to the hours, but she felt a certain hopefulness seeing Bailey again.

"I'm alive…no thanks to you."

Bailey laughed. It was a laugh that meant he understood. She wouldn't dare mention the number of times he'd saved her life since their shared hell had begun and he knew it.

"Far be it from me to take credit for saving your life. I'm only glad to see you alive. Not everybody agrees with me, but we're going to need you." The smile on Bailey's face drew into a serious frown. "We've got about six hours to get this bird to fly right or we'll all be putting our heads between our legs and kissing our asses goodbye. Volus included, though they can't even scratch theirs."

"So, what's the plan?"

Bailey sucked in and exhaled a heavy breath. "We have another problem to solve before we fix our current one."

"I don't believe this is the right time to speak of this," Tevos said, stepping up and almost between Aria and Bailey. "Aria is still wea—"

Aria placed a hand on Tevos's arm, but her eyes were on Bailey. "Please," she said with a forced graciousness and crossed her arms. "Tell me. What is this problem?"

Bailey gave Tevos a sideways glance and she nodded reluctantly, giving her consent despite her own objection. Though Bailey's voice was low, he spoke without fear. "The council is our problem, Aria. They plan on arresting you."

There was a moment when the world around Aria seemed to shift. Like the flickering of a vid screen, it went in and out. An old rage (or at least it seemed old, though in the stream of time it was hardly an embryo) seeped up. She felt the needed to grab something, _anything_ , and throw it across the room. There were books piled on a desk nearby, as though someone had picked them up from where they fell from a bookshelf and haphazardly set them on the end of a desk. She wanted to send them flying. Either with her hands or with biotics, it didn't matter. If people got in the way of her tirade, then so be it. She would toss them as she tossed the books and the salt and the pots and pans and utensils. Who cared if both Bailey and Bray looked at her as if she were insane? Who cared if every husk, cannibal, and Reaper could hear her for miles around? This was here, this was now…

And then Aria realized with a shudder, that this was not now. This was the past. Only the gods of any galaxy would know just how much in the past it was. Time had taken on a suddenly surreal quality. What was past? What was present? All Aria knew was that the seemingly flickering vid screen of her life had shifted to a time when she stood in a demolished kitchen, inside of a demolished diner where tables were turned over and food spoiled on the floor, and she stared across a dirty kitchen island at Bray who had watched her tirade silently as he often had before. And though she had known the reason for her actions were simple—they weren't getting off the Citadel, they weren't going back home, not now not ever—the only answer she gave to Bray for her actions had been…

 **EEE**

 **Citadel – Before Endgame**

 _ **"** **I** t means, Bray, that if we don't get moving, we're dead."_

Those words felt like a lifetime ago, though in fact, they were just five minutes old. In those five minutes, they had taken some much-needed sustenance in the form of food and water. Well, Bailey and Bray had stuffed their faces, but the dead body on the ground beside them didn't exactly make her hungry, so Aria guzzled a glass of water like a dying woman. She would need the fuel to keep her going.

They didn't have much time to take what they needed. With a mostly dead Reaper right outside that still seemed to have the ability to communicate with its minions. Her tirade, though unstoppable, had been ill timed. The husks would be on their way back, and soon.

Gulping her last, Aria set her glass down and wiped her mouth. "Did either of you notice a back way out of here?"

Bray chewed his final bite of food (something cold and meaty that would have just spoiled if left uneaten) and swallowed. "No, but I could check. Be right back."

"Make it quick."

As Bray slipped out the kitchen through a rear pantry door, Aria inspected her most favorite of outfits. She had never been the overly fashionable sort, but she also wasn't the kind to wear whatever came out of the closet either. This particular set—with the white jacket trimmed in fuchsia and the Omega logo on the back—was her favorite. It told everyone who was queen without having to wear a ridiculous crown. Now, it was a tattered ruin. The sleeves, which came to a tight wrap around her wrists, were singed and shredded. The black jumper underneath had a tear in the thigh of one leg and the knee of the other. Probably from the crash. Her outfit had never gotten this messed up during her tangles with Cerberus on Omega.

With a grimace, she pulled the ruined jacket from her shoulders and tossed it across the kitchen island, where Bailey finished off a sandwich and contemplated the pattern of the cook's brains on the wall.

He'd been quiet since her outburst; or should she say, since their argument. If you could call it that. Clearly, what he'd seen had disturbed him, so much so he'd utterly ignored her command to "take point" and started looking for something to eat and drink. Bray had followed suit, and so, ironically, had she. Now that they were fueled and ready to go, her first thought was to issue the command again, but instead, she did something completely unlike herself. This was more like the ghost of Shepard whispering in her ear.

"Are you going to be able to go on, Bailey?" She did, however, ensure that the essential Aria T'Loak remained.

Bailey laughed. It was caustic. If he had continued, it might have burned her ears, but hilarity ended quick for Bailey. He gulped the last of his water and turned to her. "That your way of asking if I'm all right, T'Loak?"

She gave him a smile as disingenuous as her as her next words. "I don't need a soldier who can't fight just because he saw something that bothered him."

"We're all bound to see something that'll disturb us more than once in this hell." His eyes fell to her jacket on the island between them as whatever horror he'd experienced played across his face, but he looked back up at her with determination. "I can fight. Don't you worry. Owen doesn't mean warrior for nothing. Well, it actually means 'young warrior' but we both know I'm past that stage, don't we?"

Aria raised an eyebrow. "Owen?"

"My name, actually. I have a first one. People just don't go around calling me Commander or Bailey on a regular basis, _Aria."_

Her eyebrow dropped and a frown ensued. "When did we get to be on a first name basis?"

"Somewhere between Purgatory and Hell," he said with a knowing smile. Aria almost smiled in return. He meant the nightclub just before "hell" broke loose.

"How 'bout it? I'll call you Aria and you can call me Owen."

"I'm not particularly fond of first names. I don't even know Bray's."

Bailey harrumphed and gave a sad half-smile. "The three of us are in this together, you know, and life is too damn short to be that much of a hardass."

As though his words were a prediction, something like a plate or a sliver of glass went skittering across the dining room floor, followed by the low growling moan of a single husk. A scout. It was coming, and it knew exactly where to look.

Aria picked up the butcher knife she had used to skewer the last husk and handed another one to Bailey just as Bray appeared out of the pantry door.

"Hurry, this way," he said, waving them over.

Stuffing the last husk against the door as nothing more than a way of buying themselves some time, Aria grabbed one more blade for Bray and follow the two men out of the kitchen on silent feet. The door flipped closed noiselessly as Bray led them through a maze of back stock shelves loaded with dry goods and silverware, past employee lockers and a break room table. On one wall was an ancient arcade game that no one would ever play again. And ahead, was another door that read EXIT in bright red letters. Bray went straight for the door but stopped.

"What are we waiting for?" Aria whispered.

Bray brought up a hand. "Be patient."

 _Patient?_ Somewhere behind them, a door was opening. She couldn't hear the squeak of its hinges or the swish of air as the door swung open, but the mindless growl of a husk was unmistakable. It was coming.

In Bray's search for a back way out, he had stumbled across this door and nearly stumbled across two more husks. He'd opened it easily enough, but only to discover the unsightly used-to-be-humans standing about three feet from the door. By some miracle known only to fools and the careless, the husks' backs had been to him and they hadn't seen his quick duck back into the diner's stockroom. Had they, the three of them would have found themselves stuck, as the old saying goes, between a rock and hard place.

You see, what Aria didn't know, what none of them knew, was that while they refueled, while they talked and looked for a way out, they were being surrounded. These seemingly lone husks were exactly as Aria surmised they were—scouts—on the lookout for any stragglers. It was easy, during a system of genocide, to overlook a few of your quarry, who might have hidden or appeared to be dead who weren't. Sometimes, the ones taking part in the genocide had to go back and make sure they got everybody. Now, they were sure they had three such somebody's to get.

So, instead of 'holding up the works' as Aria thought he was, Bray was peeking through the door, which he'd opened a crack, and was waiting for his moment to strike. And while Aria was looking over her shoulder, Bray brought up two fingers, indicating what was waiting for them on the other side of the door. With Aria's steel gift in his hand, he nodded to Bailey, an unspoken deal to strike passing between them, and he opened the door.

It happened simultaneously. None of the husks could have calculated such a scenario. They were too dimwitted, too slow. They knew only one thing—find and attack. It didn't matter what it was. If it moved and it had a pulse, attack it. The one coming through the kitchen and the two standing out behind the diner (like a couple of employees taking a smoke break and talking shit about their boss) each saw almost the exact same thing at the exact same time (in whatever way husks saw things through those glowing orbs they called eyes)—a moving pulse with a blade.

Aria caught hers by hiding behind the ancient arcade game. When it was close enough, her blade found its way into an eye socket. There was an electrical discharge, a burst of black viscous liquid, which splattered on her arm, and the husk's life ebbed from it like air out of a hot air balloon. But not before its one good eye locked onto her, registered her.

Bray and Bailey caught theirs nearly unawares. Their mistake was in their need to hurry. The sound of their footfalls triggered a response and the husks saw them before they took them down, one with a blade to the temple and the other with a blade to the base of the skull.

Each of them thought they had taken down the threat before it could become a greater one. Unfortunately, what one husk saw, all husks saw.

As Aria came bounding out of the exit door, giving both Bray and Bailey a bad scare, the same cacophonous sound reached their collective ears at the same time. It started as a low rumble in the distance, and then, second by second, inch by inch, it grew. A growl became a roar. One set of feet became many. Bailey knew it. He'd heard it already when he watched a horde of them take out a school, and he'd wished to never hear it again. He was the first one to recognize it.

"Oh shit!"

"What?"

Bailey laid a heavy hand on Bray's shoulder, pulling on him, getting him to move. "Aria, if you ever wanted to find out his given name, ask him now before we run out of chances. We've gotta go! Now!"

Baffled, Bray looked at Bailey and Aria, but he was moving. He didn't know what was happening, but he was moving. "What the hell is he talking about?"

Aria moved too, following the two men as they darted out onto the street where they had left their old buddy, the Reaper, in pieces. She chanced one quick look behind before she ducked around the next building. The diner's back exit had let out onto an unruly service road, filled with rubbish bins and back alley vid-com consoles. Even on a good day, the service roads had sporadic lighting. Not much need for them, since there wasn't any reason for anyone to be back here, except for those who worked the shops or maintained the businesses along this strip. But in the distance, coming like a rippling grey wave as the beams of light reflected off of their bald, opaque heads, was a mass of husks.

"Nothing," Aria breathed in answer to Bray. "Move!"

 **EEE**

 _ **S**_ haped like a capital Y and full of fish. Bluegills, yellow perch, rock bass; you name it; you could probably catch it in Keuka Lake. It was a little slice of heaven on Earth. Maybe a year ago, maybe a little more than a year ago, Bailey had gone there on vacation (when he had an opportunity for such a thing as vacations. Nowadays, vacations were just a dream, an idea you told a buddy about but knew you'd never see again). He had promised the kids he would take them camping and fishing. His youngest, Donna, hadn't been too keen on the idea. She'd wanted to hang with her girlfriends. They were of the intellectual sort, called geeks or nerds in another lifetime, who pondered the immense depths of an elcor interpretation of Hamlet. Bailey didn't get it. An elcor tired him out just asking for directions. He couldn't imagine sitting through fourteen agonizing hours of, "Lamentably: 'to die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub.'"

Bailey would rather his daughter and her girlfriends be intellectual enough to start a book club and read the classics. You know, Hemmingway, Rowling, King. Shakespeare wasn't bad either, but performed by an all-elcor cast? Come on!

Now, his son, Noah, was a different matter all together. Get the boy fishing and he was as happy as a clam. He could pluck fish out of the water the way those old writers could pluck words out of the air, didn't matter what body of water he was in. His boy could probably catch fish on the Presidium, and purportedly, there were none. When it came to fishing, he and Noah were on the same boat, pun intended. That, however, was where their similarities ended.

The divorce hadn't been amicable, to say the least. That and his absences while on the job hadn't helped to foster a great relationship between he and his children. He missed huge slices of their childhood, was hardly there as they entered puberty, and by the time they were both into their teenaged years, the gap between them was so huge it was nearly impossible to mend. He didn't know them, and they didn't know him.

" _It's the job,"_ he tried to explain them.

" _It's always the job,"_ had been their answer.

He was a horrible father. Bailey knew that and so did his kids. They didn't have to tell him. It was written all over their faces every time he went to visit. But he went.

Anyway…

Keuka Lake—that was their place, and even though Noah hated being around him, he loved being at Keuka Lake. They could get along for a little while and Bailey could attempt to tolerate his son's taste in music (all screaming and mindless techno-beats to Bailey), while they enjoyed the cool north air and the golden-orange beauty of fall leaves. Sometimes, when the sun hit just the right way, those golden hued leaves looked like they were on fire.

Bailey ran, and as he did, he tried not to imagine the sight of Keuka Lake destroyed. He tried not to allow his mind's eyes to picture those dozens of green acres populated by the glittering beauty that was the lake turned black as coal dust, or that blue lake turned red with blood. Nor would he let his mind wander to a place where his kids were in any harm. Noah might hate his guts, but he damn well listened when Bailey told him what might be coming. It wasn't common knowledge, nor was it something Bailey had discussed with Shepard when she asked, but through vids and extranet communiqués, Bailey and Noah had devised a plan to keep his mamma and his sister safe. Other than fishing, it was the only other thing they had ever worked on together and worked well.

They called it the bunker. Bailey had spent the money, every last dime of his retirement, on it. Installed underground, beneath the house and to his ex-wife's protest, not long after Shepard told him what was coming. He hadn't wanted to believe her. A part of him had wanted to believe her mind had been tweaked just a bit by Cerberus in order for her to believe in conspiracy theories that were as ancient as the asari—the Collectors, the Reapers—but he knew Commander Shepard was no flake. If she believed it, she had to have some sort of proof. Most importantly, he wasn't willing to let his kids' lives be the price he would pay afterward if he did nothing with the information and Shepard's warnings of invasion came true.

Well, it came true.

With the rest of Bailey's money, Noah had filled the bunker with enough non-perishable foods and MREs to last the three of them several years. At the time, he had thought it would be a reasonable amount of time for the galaxy to beat back the Reapers (…if they came…). Now, though, with system after system falling, systems as powerful and influential as Parnitha, Bailey wasn't so sure the supplies would last them, especially if they had taken in friends or his ex-in-laws.

He tried not to think of that either. He tried not to imagine the three of them huddled in there, hoping for the best, but terrified of the worst, but he did. He couldn't help himself. Other than trying to do his duty and rescue the council, his family had been the only thing on his mind. It didn't show, of course. Bailey would never let it show. He hadn't revealed his emotional terror to Shepard and he wasn't about to reveal it Aria or Bray. They would think him weak. But, thinking of his family hiding underground did give him an idea.

He ran. Not back the way they came, and certainly not in the direction of the school. There was nothing left there to save. Bailey had to concentrate on the council, and on his three-man team.

"This way!"

Bailey shot down a northern-facing side street. True north on the Citadel always pointed to the Tower and the Presidium, and that's where they were going. In this section of the ward, they were the only thing moving. Easy pickings, easy targets. It was time to get below, and Bailey found just wanted he was looking for.

In big cities like New York, concrete stairwells used to lead downward toward subway stations. People used to ride what were called "cars" back in the day. Today, traveling from one end of the city to the other had become far more streamlined and the subway system had been discontinued, but as a youngster, Bailey used to read about the old subways system and wish he could take the stairs to the underground places and explore the old system of tunnels.

No subway system existed on the Citadel, but there was a vast network of lift shafts that shot to all parts of Zakera Ward. Each ward had the same system, and many of them had changed or been altered over the years to suit new development. It wasn't the New York City subway system. It didn't even come close, but there was a system of travel very few knew about, and even fewer used.

Ahead, was an awning and a set of stairs that led downward. The cold, hard metal of the railing chilled Bailey's fingers when his hands grasped them, much they way the growling of approaching husks chilled his body. They were closing. He had to get his trio low, underground and out of sight. It was the only way.

The stairs, which descended a good ten feet, let out onto a dimly lighted pathway. The locals called it the pedway. One side of it overlooked the next level of the ward below (a semi-continuation of the buildings above—storerooms, warehousing), while the other was a tiled white wall loaded with advertisements for everything from nightclubs to lattes. The area reminded Bailey of the New York subway system simply because it felt old, used, worked, dirty. It wasn't, of course. Keepers maintained these areas just as they did every section of the Citadel and it glowed with garish white lights, but it brought back images in his mind of places he'd longed to explore as a child.

Nowadays, he wasn't so interested in roaming and exploring. He wanted to stay in one place. Yet, where did he find himself? Roaming, exploring, looking for a way to get themselves out of hell's way.

The pedway was a back alley, essentially, a way for people to get from point A to point B while avoiding the hustle and bustle of the streets above. Some even used the pedway for exercise, jogging for miles, because of the way it looped around the city, leading to different areas on the ground level. You could ostensibly travel the entirety of the Citadel upon these underground catwalks, but not today. The days of enjoying the Citadel in that manner were probably over.

Ahead! There it was!

Bailey picked up the pace only to have someone grab his armor and yank him backward.

" _What the hell…?"_

A husk, his mind told him. They'd already gotten the other two behind him and one now had ahold of him. Bailey brandished the blade. He would have used the gun but a quite kill was better than a loud one that might draw a thousand more like it. Twisting, he brought the blade around for the killing blow and missed Aria's face by inches. If her quick reflexes had not caught his wrist in a grip tight enough to nearly break the fragile bones within, he might have slid the blade right into the side of her tentacled head.

Her eyes were wide with fear and adrenaline but also with a heavy dose of resentment. "Watch where you point that thing!"

"I thought you were one of those husks, dammit! What are we stopping for?"

Aria pointed over the side of the pedway. "For that!"

On the warehousing level below, next to a burned out delivery truck (and an equally burned out body on the floor next to it) was a skycar. The passenger side was wide open and flickering lights inside revealed that it was operable. Aria obviously wanted to use it as their getaway.

Bailey shook his head and jogged the few feet to the spot he'd been searching for all along. "What?" he called over his shoulder. "And get our asses shot out of the sky again? I don't think so."

Aria followed him. "Not if we stay off the surface. We keep to the skyways inside the Citadel. The quicker we get to the Council, the quicker we can get out of here!"

"Negative," Bailey said, and tapped a code into his omni-tool. A ledge began to extend from the side of the platform. As it extended, it dropped and began separating into the steps of a stairwell.

Aria never paid it any mind. Her anger blistered. "Don't talk to me as if I were one of your officers! Who the hell did you put in charge?"

Bailey turned to her, but only briefly. "For the next few minutes, I'm in charge," he said and began descending the stairs to the level below before they'd even finished unfolding to the ground. He threw back over his shoulder, "I have a plan that will get us there just as fast without having to dodge bullets and—"

Bray shot past Aria and then Bailey, down the stairs that shook with both of their weight. "You two argue later!"

Bray didn't have to point or alert them in any other way. They both looked back the way they had come. Common sense told them they would see the husks they had been outrunning keeping pace with them, following them down the stairwell to this level, but their minds had manufactured an image of them jogging, perhaps by twos or threes, in a large and ugly group. What they saw warped whatever image they might have once had of husks.

The husks weren't just coming down the stairwell, they were pouring out like insects from a hole in a tree. Some on the stairs, some clinging to the railings, crawling along the walls and the ceiling. Hundreds of them!

Neither Bailey nor Aria waited for an imperative shout to _RUN!_ , they simply followed Bray down the retractable set of stairs and down to the warehousing level. Husks were advancing upon them out of the corners of their eyes. On the ceilings above them, on the walls around them. Several were crawling down the stairs like bugs after a meal. Bailey keyed a code and the stairs began to retract. Husks nearing the end had their fingers and toes squashed. They hung onto the collapsing stairs and their mates the way ants cling to each other in a puddle of water.

Bailey took point, ignoring what advanced in his peripheral vision. He kept his focus on the sight ahead of him and it wasn't the skycar. He passed it without it even looking. They would never have had the time to escape in it. Husks would have advanced before they had the time to take off. They would have broken windows, gotten inside, and ripped them to pieces. This way, they had a chance. A slim chance, but a chance nonetheless.

Ahead, looming like a heavenly point of light was a lift.

One of the orders Bailey had transmitted to all officers, before streaming a video to the citizens of the Citadel, was to lock down the lifts to keep Reaper troops from advancing too quickly through the station. Just as they should be, the lift doors were sealed. A given, even in their dire situation, but a given easy to override at his command. He tapped the omni-tool, sending his code over the airwaves, a closing gap of perhaps five yards, even as the corners of his vision grew darker. Husks were advancing toward the lift almost as fast as they were. It was as if they could read minds or deduce intent, and maybe they could. Bailey didn't care. He cared only about moving his feet, closing the gap…

 _Ten feet_ …a painful stitch bloomed in his side… _eight feet_ …the doors had begun to slide open, a sliver of light glowing from inside… _six feet_ …one husk tried to get in, but an invisible force pulled it away from the opening and it flitted into the air like a feather… _four feet_ …an ear-shattering retort of gunfire at his left… _three feet_ …a blue explosion at his right, husks flying… _two feet_ …doors fully open, waiting for them but filling with husks…one foot and then…

…Bailey skidded inside the lift, husks or no husks. Aria, practically flying into the lift, gave a cry greater than the growl of their adversaries. With Bray in, the doors hissed shut, and then the real battle to live or to kill began. This was life or death and in the next few seconds, they would either live or die. Time to find out which one was going to happen.

They came face to face with husks too many to number. Not because their numbers were so great, but because there was no time to count them. Aria's blade met the first husk between the eyes and the second in the temple powerfully enough to sink the blade a centimeter or more into the wall on the other side. Powerful she may be, but invincible she was not. A hot poker of pain streaked across her shoulder blade. Husk nails. Wishing now she hadn't been so hasty to discard her jacket, Aria reached behind her just as the husk leaned in for the kill, its black teeth gleaming in the harsh lift light, and crushed its skull with a biotic pulse. Behind her, a husk gave a throaty scream. Aria twisted around, not nearly ready for the next attack, but ready to go down fighting…when Bailey's blade drove deep into the husk's open mouth. It gurgled, glowing eyes rolling back into its head, and then it dropped. Bailey and Aria's eyes met for a millisecond, and the fight resumed. Bray's blade buried itself to the hilt into another husk's head. He had hoped it was to be the last one he'd ever hear when a keening groan sounded above him. He looked up and there was another one, stuck to the ceiling of the lift like a Khar'shanian arachnid waiting to pounce, its long nails embedded into the metallic surface. Bray didn't give it a chance. He drew his pistol and fired.

The sound rang inside the lift like a portentous death knell, but this time, and for once, the portent was a good one. They were the only ones left alive inside the lift to cover their ears. The husks were all dead, even the one clinging to the ceiling. Its body went limp the second the bullet breached its skull, the contents thereof splattering at Bray's feet. He pulled it down with a growl of his own and smashed its skull with a heavy foot for good measure.

"Dirty bastards!" He looked at the other two, wincing as the shot rang in their ears, and frowned. "Sorry."

Catching his breath, Bailey stepped over a husk and inquired of Aria. "Are you hurt?"

"I'll live," she grimaced.

Bailey ignored her. He had time to inspect the three deep gouges that ran from the meaty top of her shoulder down over her shoulder blade and to see blood leaking in purple runners down her back before Aria twisted out of his grip.

Batting his hands away from her skin, she hissed, "I said I'll live. It's just a scratch." She paused to administer her own medi-gel, and added, "Now what?"

Her reaction surprised him, but he didn't resent it. She wasn't angry with him. She was angry at the pain, angry for allowing one to get the best of her. So, Bailey backed away, let Aria have her space, and consulted his omni-tool.

"I've ordered all lifts on lockdown to hinder the headway the Reapers have gained, to slow them down…so, we're not taking any rides to the Presidium, if that's what either of you were thinking."

"Great," Bray said. "And here I thought the rest of the trip was going to be a breeze."

Aria shot him second a sideways glance. "He's exaggerating…painfully…but I'm with Bray. If the lift is not going to move, what the hell are we doing in here?"

Bailey looked at the ceiling where the husk had been hanging like a spider. "We're going up. Bray, give Aria a boost, won't you? We need to get that hatch open."

Aria sighed and looked down her nose at the annoying human. She could have questioned Bailey, asked where the hell they were going, but what was the point. They were now out of harm's way. However annoying he might be, he had saved her ass _again._ Not only in the brig, but from the very beginning. If he hadn't told her what was coming while she lounged in the nightclub, she might not have been prepared. (Of course, Aria T'Loak was prepared for anything, but no one is ever really prepared for a Reaper invasion. That was just impossible.) She might not be alive to ponder what it was about him that truly annoyed her.

Nor was she read to ponder it just yet. Husks still clawed and moaned on the other side of the lift doors. Before long, they'd find away in. The three of them needed to get moving to wherever the hell Bailey had in mind. So, when Bray knelt and cupped his hands for her booted foot, she didn't argue.

 **EEE**

 _ **T**_ hey went up only to go farther down.

With a ladder that descended into a gap between the wall and the lift, Bailey led them deep into the heart of the Citadel. The going was slow and arduous for three exhausted people, but for all the curses Aria threw Bailey's way, she held no doubts he knew what he was doing. Bray doubted, of course. He displayed his doubt with all four of his eyes and with every word that came from his mouth, but he followed wherever Aria went, did whatever Aria said. Just as she expected from her second, and yet she almost wished he would disobey her. She wished he would tell her what a horrible idea this is as they slinked deeper and deeper into this claustrophobic hell, toward an inevitability that proved surer as the seconds ticked by.

They were not going to make it off the Citadel. No matter how hard they fought, no matter what miracles they were able to pull off to get to the Council. Something was going to stop them. She felt it in her bones, just like she had in the past, when Petrovski's ship, the Elbrus, arrived to halt the Adjutant takeover of Omega. They appeared just in the nick of time to destroy the transports the Adjutants had arrived in. She knew then something was wrong, something didn't feel right, but she had allowed the Illusive Man to soothe her conscience and stroke her ego.

Nothing, in her experience, ever went smoothly or to plan. Truth and goodwill never triumphed, which is why she'd never put much stock in either. Yet, here she was, letting Bailey do exactly what the Illusive Man had. He stroked her ego and her conscience, put her charge, let her lead the mission to save the council if only to save herself. Damn him! And damn herself for letting him do it. Bailey wasn't the Illusive Man, though, and it was his only saving grace. She knew he had no other ulterior motive than trying to save the council and the people who lived on this station. She could admire him _slightly_ for that, and so she followed his every whim. Partly because she didn't really have any other choice.

He led them down, down for what felt like miles until they reached a narrow opening along the wall of the lift tube. An airshaft, he'd said, that would lead them to an intricate web of tunnels, which would, in turn, lead them to the council. They took the tunnel one at a time, sliding in feet first, then turning around and crawling on hands and knees like infants into the dark.

What felt like hundreds of meters in (and likely was), Aria stopped to breathe and rest her knees. Leaning her back again the wall of the tunnel, she grimaced at Bailey and Bray huffing behind her. "How is this faster than a skycar?"

"Is this ever going to stop?" Bray growled. "My knees are killing me."

"Stop your bellyaching, both of you," Bailey said with a huff. He motioned her forward with a nod of his head. "Keep moving, Aria. There's an opening not ten meters ahead. We can break there."

Aria got back on her knees with a groan and started moving. "I think I liked it better when you called me T'Loak."

"I might find that funny if you'd bother to reciprocate."

"What? You mean you want me to call you _Armando?"_

"Armando?" Bray asked from behind and started laughing. "That's your birth name?" He said it again, sounding it out and attempting an accent he knew nothing about, which made him laugh harder, almost hysterically.

Given their situation, Bailey could hardly blame him. They needed the laughter, but not at his expense. He groaned, though not simply at Bray's amusement. He had thought telling Aria his personal name was a way to break the ice, let them work together more as a team than as opponents, but he'd wasted his time. She had already known it. He felt duped.

"I prefer to go by Owen, my middle name. How the hell did you find about that anyway?"

"I have my sources," Aria said with a grin. "It's important to keep dirt on my enemies."

"Enemies?"

"You're C-Sec. Automatic enemy."

"I'll try to remember that the next time I think about saving your life."

"Please do," she said, looking over her shoulder at him, and rolled her eyes. "And while you're at it, try not to stare at my ass."

"Considering its right in my face, that'll be difficult to do."

Behind them, Bray growled in frustration. "Why don't the two of you find a side tunnel, flog each other and get it over with?"

Aria stopped, looked over her shoulder, _"What?"_

"Oh…nothing."

Bailey had the last laugh.

True to his word, the tunnel eventually opened up onto a space the size of a small room. More knee-busting, back-breaking tunnels opened up to destinations unknown from each wall, and above was nothing more than an opening with a rapidly-moving fan sucking in debris from all corners, but cooling their sweaty bodies with a burst of air (those who had sweat glands, anyway). The best part, though, was the ceiling. Wide enough for all three of them to fit comfortably side by side, and high enough to stand to their full height and stretch their legs, which they each did with delight. A trio of moans and groans issued through the tunnels that, for anyone listening in, could have been mistaken for a Fornax video, or old people lamenting the woes of old age.

"Oh man, I'm too old for this shit," Bailey said.

"You and me both." Bray rested the palms of his hands on his knees, stretching his back. "If I have to crawl through one more tunnel, Bailey, I think I'll have to kill you."

"Go ahead. You'll be doing me a favor." He would have continued with the many ways he would rather die than keep going, but Aria punched him in the arm to silence him.

"Do you hear that?"

Bailey straightened up. "Hear what?"

"I do," Bray said, and every muscle that he'd relaxed instantly tightened again. He drew his pistol, aiming it at a small tunnel close to the ceiling. Bailey and Aria drew theirs a second after and waited. A paper or two drifted out of the opening, were sucked up by the fan above and then were gone, but the shuffling movement continued. Aria waited to see the ugly face of a husk, Bray imagined the hellacious glabrous things that had assaulted him and the other prisoners of cellblock D, things that had once been of his own kind, and Bailey hoped to see the green and crustaceous head of a keeper coming out of the tunnel.

But they were all wrong. Shuffling backwards, ass first, was the rounded end and two feet of a human male. The feet found sturdy footing on the rungs of a ladder and slowly descended. Bailey didn't recognize the back end, but he certainly recognized the face when the man turned, wide-eyed at the sight of three pistols aimed at his forehead.

"Mouse?"

 **EEE**

 _ **A**_ ria wouldn't have known this dark-skinned human from the next. All humans looked the same to her. Only a few of them stood out in her mind. Only a few of them had faces stamped into her psyche, faces she would never forget long after they had lived out their short lives. Faces like Grayson, Petrovsky, Commander Shepard. Those human faces were worth remembering, one for the sake of gratitude, and the others for revenge.

This one she did not know, nor did she think his face would linger long in her memory, but the same could not be said for Bailey. He greeted the younger man like a long lost son, bear hugging him with both arms. This wasn't a surprise to only Aria and Bray. Mouse seemed equally as baffled.

"Uh…Commander Bailey," he said, peering over Bailey's shoulder at the asari and batarian with unfriendly faces. "You…uh…you okay?"

Bailey broke from him. "I'm fine. We're all fine, I'm just happy as a red sand addict with a fresh high to see a familiar face. I'd ask what the hell you're doing down here, but I can guess. Are you alone?"

Mouse looked cautiously at the other two.

"They're not Reapers, son," Bailey said. "They're here to help. Now, talk to me."

"Yeah, okay," Mouse said with a nod. "I'm not alone. I'm with Kelham."

" _Elias_ Kelham?" Bailey did not greet that name with as much happiness.

"Yeah. At first, it was just to get safe, you know. He was hoping to ride it out for a while, then maybe sneak to the docks, find a way to get off the Citadel."

"Ha!" Bray said.

"Go on, Mouse."

"I told him it was pointless, that the station was moving too fast to attempt escape, but he didn't want to listen to me. I couldn't just sit around knowing there were people up there dying. So, I started going to the surfacing, finding people that needed help and bringing them down here."

"Oh, I bet Kelham loved you for that."

"He wasn't too happy, and he would have killed me if it weren't for the drell."

"Drell?"

"Yeah, you know, Krios's son. Kolyat."

Bailey's eyes widened. "Kolyat's alive?"

"Yeah, he's good. He's been helping me."

"Thank God. Where is he? Take me there."

Up until this point, Aria had been tolerant of the conversation only because she was exhausted and every muscle in her body ached. She needed the break (she needed another tall glass of water even more), but the minute Bailey demanded to be taken to some drell, holding her tongue was suddenly not an option.

"Bailey." When he turned to her, she added one word. "No."

"Aria, we have to—"

"What we _have to_ do is get to the council. That's our mission. That's why I'm here, risking my goddamn life, remember?"

Yes, he knew. He knew very well, and he would have said so. He would have told her why finding Kolyat was important. Ever since the Cerberus coup and the incident with Kai Leng, which took the life of the young drell's father, Kolyat had something of a connection to one particular council member. Valern, the salarian councilor. If it hadn't been for Kolyat's father, Thane Krios, Valern would be dead today, at the hands of Kai Leng. If anyone could take them straight to the council, it would be Kolyat. But Mouse never gave Bailey the chance to speak in his defense.

"The council?" Mouse said, directing his question to Aria, albeit hesitantly. "You're trying to save the council?"

"That's the plan."

"Well, you might want to rethink that." As soon as he saw the change in their expressions, he lowered his head.

Aria dropped her defiantly crossed arms and stepped toward the young man. "What? What are you talking about?"

"What happened, Mouse?" Bailey asked, his hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Kolyat's the one who told me," Mouse answered, his gaze on Bailey. "Reapers attacked the tower first. That's where the council was. He tried to get to them, he said. He tried to save them, but by the time he got there, the Tower was overrun."

Aria had not experienced a sudden sensation of vertigo for some time, not since she found Liselle dead, throat cut, and Paul Grayson's bed the sponge that soaked up her daughter's blood. This moment was much the same. The room spun like the shadow upon a sundial, slow and methodical. A pang of loss, not nearly as significant as Liselle's, enveloped her, but its ache was no less potent.

Tevos, ever the voice of reason, had over the years been Aria's red sand, Aria's addiction, one she never fully rehabilitated from. There had been others since their departure. Nyreen, for example, as well as a string of other lovers, but no one had ever been able to top what she felt for Tevos. It was part of the reason Aria kept her distance (she didn't need the distraction or mental clouding of one as seductively moral as she), and why she hated the Citadel (its lure and her desire for political clout—Tevos would have called it 'political advancement'—was what drove them apart). And maybe Tevos was the reason she came here, despite her hatred for the place. She had been kidding herself to think she could oversee Omega's reconstruction from the Citadel. Even Bray and Grizz hadn't understood it, but they followed, they didn't question. Aria did now, and maybe Tevos was the answer. With all that was going on in the galaxy, this was the only place to be. She was supposed to keep Tevos safe, and if the human rodent were true, she had just wasted every second of her time on this forsaken station.

Aria barely heard Mouse when he continued speaking. "If you're trying to get to the Tower, I wouldn't bother. You'd never make it."

"Aria, you okay?"

Bailey tried to touch her arm, consoler her. She slapped his hand away. Consolation was the last thing she needed. What she needed was something to shoot. Bray knew that. He kept his distance. Bailey, on the other hand, didn't know her at all.

Bailey sighed. "Are you sure about this?"

"It's what Kolyat told me."

"You said he _tried_ , that the Tower was overrun, but did he _see_ them?"

Aria latched onto Bailey's words like a life raft in rough seas. Yes, Bailey didn't know her at all, but he knew the Citadel, he knew the council. What good is a council if they didn't have a system designed to keep them safe, even in dire circumstances? They would have an emergency exit.

"Look, Bailey, I don't know," Mouse answered. "You'd have to ask Kolyat."

Aria turned on the boy, grabbed his lapels. He whimpered. She ignored it. "Take us to this Kolyat. Take us now!"

 **EEE**

 _ **T**_ he Citadel was designed to be a haven from the rest of the galaxy. Out there, people had a greater chance of dying, getting sick or becoming an addict or, worse yet, a slave. The galaxy could be a dangerous place, but the Citadel was different. It was home to a lot of people from all walks of life. Sure, it has its shady characters, it dealers and addicts, and people did from time to time die. It's what people do, untimely or not. It would be impossible to keep out all the unwanted aspects of the galaxy. They seemed to worm their way in no matter how hard you try to keep them out. Still, the Citadel had always been a haven from the worst of what the galaxy had to offer. Like war.

Within the last several years, however, that sentiment had begun to prove untrue.

In that time, Commander Shepard had come to the Citadel, talking of the end of all life in the galaxy and speaking a name that most had forgotten (or had only ever heard in passing as part of some ancient institution which had long since gone the way of the protheans)—Reapers. Her defiance of the Council read like an omen. Even her saving of the Council, on more than one occasion, was a portent of worse times to come. Sovereign, the geth, Cerberus; the Citadel had been under constant attack. It seemed the haven had begun to lose its power.

And then the war started. Shepard's threat had come true. The Reapers were here. Planet after planet began to fall. Yet, where did the refugees flee? The Citadel, the haven of the galaxy. They came in droves until the four long arms of their mother could no longer hold them all. But for most who lived upon the Citadel, the war was on the outside, something you shook your head at when watching news vids. You expressed your disdain for the horrors happening elsewhere, you talked about it at every opportunity with your family or your coworkers, and then you went about your life or back to work. And, while you secretly prayed those horrors would remain in that otherworldly domain of "elsewhere," you felt secure on the Citadel. How could you not? Citadel forces had repelled both a geth and a Cerberus insurgence. The Citadel, your haven, your mother would protect you from whatever the galaxy had to throw at you.

Some hours ago, that sense of security on the Citadel had fled like the first few people who were lucky enough to see the Reapers coming before the real attack began. They fled into homes or safe rooms. Some went to ground, seeking the refuge of air ducts and tunnels long before Chorban and Jahleed thought of it. Still others had the good sense, and the luck of timing, to board their vessels and flee.

Not all were so fortunate. One such person was just stepping out onto his balcony at the top of one of Kithoi Wards' tallest buildings when the first wave of the Reaper attack began. He owned the building himself. In fact, this man, a human, owned millions of credits worth of Citadel real estate across all four wards. He loved his possessions the way most people loved their family or their pets. As he stepped out onto his balcony, regaling himself with the breadth of the property he owned in the ward below him, his wispy blonde-white hair blowing in the Citadel's soft breeze, he spied an odd shape moving with rapidity along the length of the Ward. His eyes weren't so good anymore. (He'd been tempted more than once to get ocular implants but he refused to augment himself with anything less than human parts.) Eyeglasses left behind on the nightstand, the man squinted the white rings of his eyelids (Damn the tanning glasses! Made him look like a raccoon!), and tried to make out the shape which at first looked round like a ball and then elongated like a cigar. That's when his raccoon eyes noticed there was more than one. One by one, the speeding shapes popped into being outside the arms of the Citadel and raced inward. It wasn't until the cigar-shaped thing opened its own arms, like the arms of a squid, that he realized what he was looking at. He'd seen the news vids. He'd been on the Citadel two years prior when one attached itself to the Presidium Tower.

 _Reapers! Reapers attacking the Citadel!_

It was the million-credit businessman's last thought. A ball of fire, what he might have called a lava bomb were he on Earth, shot from the approaching Reaper and landed in his lap. He hardly had time to wonder what would become of his property. His penthouse apartment, the entire top two floors of his building went _KA-BLEWEY!_ Bits and pieces of Mr. Raccoon Man still smoldered on Kithoi Ward—a hand at the foot of one of his buildings, a leg on the roof of another. His head? Well, the only thing left was singed piece of scalp. Wispy white-blonde hair, dotted with the color of crimson, was still blowing about in what remained of the Citadel's soft breeze.

Bailey knew none of that. Had _seen_ none of that. He only knew what he saw when he exited the second in another long and tiresome tunnel with Aria and Bray close behind him. The people's sense of security, their unfailing belief that, come what may, the Citadel would protect them from whatever the galaxy had to throw at them, was gone, utterly obliterated just like the businessman's penthouse.

Mouse had led them to another, larger room. Here another fan swirled fresh air above them, but there was no amount of fresh air could cure the stench of fear and despair that had permeated the people within. There were mothers and fathers missing their children, children missing their parents, C-Sec officers missing limbs, criminals consoling decent citizens, strong men crying and weak men doling out orders.

Bailey had read of such sights when he was a youngster in school. Seen pictures of past conflicts—the Rachni wars, the Skilian Blitz, Earth's World War 3—seen the effect it had on the population, what it did to people, but never firsthand. The effect was humbling, terrifying, and enraging at the same time. Had he the time, he might have taken count. There had to be better than a hundred people in here, whispering quietly amongst themselves or silently enduring whatever pain had been inflicted upon them as the world above and everything they knew fell apart. The few C-Sec officers taking refuge here weren't giving him the opportunity to begin with. They latched onto him as soon as he exited the tunnel.

"Commander Bailey!" they called and Bailey responded.

Aria watched him go the officers, two turians and a human, but she made no move to follow. Her eyes skimmed the room, dominated by worn out and disoriented faces. Instead of marking these faces, as Bailey had, Aria marked the nearest exits should their situation take a sudden change. Their little place of refuge wouldn't last long. Even if the Reapers and their cohorts had moved on to fresher kills, they would return to this place. They would return as the husks had returned for them, seeking out whatever leftover life still waited for rescue, and when they found nothing above, they would begin to search deeper, and they would send their husks into the small places. Yes, the Reapers would find them, and then everyone here, down to the last child, would become a shredded corpse. It was only beginning to sink in just how easily such an attack could happen on Omega. She had to get back, if only to prepare her people for the final stand.

She heard Bray sigh longingly beside her. "Think we'll make it out of here?" he asked.

Her eyes on a crying asari child comforted in the arms of a haunted looking human female, Aria answered, "Whatever it takes, we're going back to Omega."

"If 'whatever' involves sacrificing this sad lot, I wouldn't do it, Aria."

She turned to him, frowning. He wasn't looking at her. "You did whatever it took to get out of the cell block alive."

Bray's gaze was upon a huddle of small children who had found refuge in each other. "That was different. I was in a prison cell, surrounded by grown men who had every bit a will and a reason to live as I did. I threw the weak ones at the beasts, and I broke the bones of the strong-willed who stood in my way. I even kicked one back who'd managed to follow me to the lift shaft."

"One of _my_ men?"

When Bray finally looked at her, it was with eyes so hollow it chilled her. Only a flash of emotion existed behind those dark eyes, one that spoke of the horror he had witnessed, and in effect, helped to create. "What does it matter? They're all dead and I escaped. I ran like a coward…"

Aria opened her mouth to tell Bray he wasn't a coward, to tell him he was the bravest and most loyal of all her recruits, but he didn't give her the chance.

"…But I wouldn't do that here. Not to children, families. I'd defend them to my last breath."

"And what about your own family back on Omega?"

Bray gave her a smile that hid every one of his pointed teeth. It was the most genuine one she had ever seen him give. "Aria," he said, placating, almost laughing. "You don't even know my son's name. Let me worry about my family. You concentrate on getting us out of here."

If there were ever a moment for Aria to ask, to delve, to find out more about someone who had worked for her for years, this would have been it. She could have asked about his son, about his given name or the name of his woman, could have asked him what it was like to be a batarian in this day and age when batarians were so hated, and whether or not bringing a batarian child into this world had been planned or not. She thought Bray could almost see the questions trembling on the end of her lips, but in the end, she didn't speak them. She showed him her back, her indifference, as she had always done. She was, after all, Aria T'Loak…an asari commando with a plethora of special titles that really didn't mean anything in the long run. If this war played out the way she thought it would, she'd be just as dead as the rest of these tunnel rats before the end.

So, she turned, and came face to face with Bailey. He was toting another man who, on any other day, would have looked well-manicured and perfect in a three-piece suit and slick hair. Now, he was a tunnel rat like the rest of them. His suit was tattered and bloody. His hair was a fright, sticking up at odd angles. A patch on the side of his scalp had been singed clean away, showing white skin. To top it off his special ensemble, the man had the nerve to be indignant. Aria already had a good idea who he was before Bailey said his name. The question was what did Bailey want with him?

"Meet Elias Kelham," Bailey said, two armed officers and Mouse hovering in the background. "The Citadel's moronic version of Al Capone."

Kelham threw him an egregious look, growling, "Hey!", until Bailey delivered a smack to the back of his head.

"Who's Al-kap'pon?" Bray said, speaking the name in the only way he understood it, which was not 1930's Earth.

"Nevermind. Kelham, meet Aria T'Loak, the woman whose ship you tried to steal."

"A-Aria T'Loak?" Kelham croaked as Aria narrowed the rat in her field of vision and tilted her slightly to the right. That was never a good sign, but Kelham didn't know that.

"Yeah, you know Aria T'Loak, right?" Bailey continued. "Ruler of Omega, Pirate Queen of the Galaxy, and all that. That was her ship you found. Why don't you tell her about it?"

Aria's hand came to rest on the pistol at her waist. "Yes, please, tell me what you found."

Kelham, who had no weapon to speak of, drew his gaze to her hand, then back up to her two furious eyes. He had never met Aria T'Loak before, but, God help him, he had heard of her. "I—um—you're ship is in good shape," Kelham began in a gravelly voice. "Okay? Mouse found it. Not me." Behind him, Mouse frowned and shook his head. "I didn't know it was yours. We were just looking for a way off the station. Look, if I had known it was yours—"

Aria rolled her eyes. "Oh, please, stop your groveling."

"Groveling? Bitch, I don't gr—" Her pistol shot toward his forehead so fast, he hardly saw it coming. Kelham's back was against the wall, the cold end of the pistol resting against the flesh between his eyes, before he could finish speaking. He saw Bailey move out of reach and out of assistance. "Bailey, you son of a bitch! What do I pay you for?" The pistol applied enough pressure to make his eyes bug. "Okay, okay, okay! That's gonna leave a mark!"

"So will a bullet in your head. Which one would you rather?"

"All right, all right. What the hell do you want from me?"

"I want my ship. Where is it?"

"Where I found it." He pointed with his left hand toward an opening tall enough to walk through. "That way."

"So, _you_ did find it. Why didn't you just take it?"

"Because your ship is surrounded."

The voice that spoke was just as gravely, but it was not Kelham's. Aria released the criminal mastermind wannabe and turned to see who had spoken, but Bailey identified him before she could.

"Kolyat!"

She turned in time to see him embrace a young drell whose eyes were as black as Bray's but with a silvery depth that spoke of having lived too much, experienced too much.

"By God, it's good to see you, Kolyat."

"You, as well, Commander Bailey. Are you well?"

She maddeningly waited for their pleasantries to end and passed the time listening behind her as Kelham tried to shuffle off, perhaps to take her ship again. He must not have noticed the well-armed batarian at her side. Behind her, Bray mumbled, "Move a muscle and I'll decorate the wall with your brains." Kelham groaned and Aria smiled. She could always count on Bray.

Aria interjected herself into Bailey and the drell's conversation. "What do you mean my ship is surrounded?"

The drell turned to her as if seeing her for the first time. Though as tattered and as disheveled as Kelham, he was nothing like Kelham. He didn't flinch under her stare. He didn't cower. Aria's brow knitted together. There was something familiar about him.

"Just that," he said, facing her and clasping his hands behind his back. "Your ship is under heavy guard. I saw it myself. Reaper ground troops have completely taken over the area. I suspect they are hoping to lay a trap for the council, if they happened to make it out of the Tower."

"Tell me what you know about the council. You were there. Tell me what happened," Aria demanded, taking a step forward, invading the drell's space, wanting to make him cringe like she had made Kelham cringe, but all he did was draw his reptilian brows together.

"You are concerned for the council?" he asked, genuinely curious. "Surprising, considering you spurned their offer just before the invasion began."

Inside, she thought, _That was before. Before I realized why I was here._ On the outside, her face twisted into an ugly rage and she grabbed the drell by his sharply angled yet tattered lapels. Bailey tried to push her away but she tossed his grip aside.

"Theirs was an offer of subservience, and I do not take orders. I give them. Now, tell me if she's alive!"

Kolyat never flinched, nor did he blink except for the involuntary movement of the nictitating membrane that flashed across his dark eyes. His frown, however, deepened.

"'She'? You mean Councilor Tevos. I wish I had an answer for you, but I do not."

He waited as Aria released him. He was not used to such bursts of emotion. His father's had been generally subdued as opposed to mother's, but he had not experienced her joy in many years. This woman's emotions were deep and full of fears she never expressed. In that way, she reminded him of his father. So, he continued…

"I was in the Tower when the invasion began, near council chambers, on my way to see Councilor Valern, but I did not make it in time. I barely made it out of the Tower alive myself."

"But they have an escape route, right?" Bailey asked, cautiously watching Aria. Kolyat had been through enough in his young life. He didn't need Aria bullying him. "The council had to have used it."

Kolyat nodded. "There is always the possibility. I, however, did not see them make use of it. Nor would I know where it is. I can only hope, which is why I suspect the presence around your ship has to do with the council. Perhaps the Reapers have not as of yet found them and they are guarding the ship in case they come for it."

"Sounds plausible."

Aria, who had not yet holstered her pistol, injected a live round in the barrel. Kelham groaned again, Bray threatened, and Aria said, "Sounds more than plausible. Let's go take back my ship."

"And get our asses shot without knowing where the council is first?" Bailey asked. "You must think I stepped off the dirt wagon yesterday."

"Finding the council will be easier once I have my ship back. We can coordinate and plan their extraction from there."

"And if we're attacked?"

Aria smirked. "Bailey, please…My ship has the firepower to withstand their assaults."

"Not against a Reaper it doesn't," Bray said behind her. She had no doubt his concentration remained upon Kelham, but he had ears, same as the rest of them. She just wished he had used what was between them instead and kept his thoughts to himself. Aria had only to look at Bailey to know her plan was a wash.

"We need to bring the council to the ship, Aria, not ship to the council," Bailey said. He didn't want to step on her toes again, and yet he was doing it anyway. Apologetically, at least.

"And how to you propose we do that when we don't know where the hell they are?"

Beside them, Kolyat cleared his throat. "If I may interject, I believe I may know someone who can help us. I just recently discovered them within the tunnels."

" _Them?"_ Bailey asked.

"Yes. They have some rather unorthodox ideas, but ones that may play to our advantage."

"What ideas?"

But Kolyat did not offer an explanation. He merely disappeared into the crowd of despairing faces, but he was not gone long. Bailey and Aria hardly had time to continue their argument (though Aria gave it her best) when Kolyat returned with two people, a human and a salarian. Bailey wouldn't have known this salarian from any other, but the human…oh, he knew him. He'd run into this one more times than he cared to admit. The cringe creasing Bailey's brow didn't leave Aria with a good feeling.

"Oh no," Bailey said as he watched Kolyat lead the two through the throngs.

"What? Who are they?"

First impressions were good. He was well built, armed and all business. The salarian at his side, intelligent, resourceful. Even Bray seemed to approve. So, what was Bailey's problem?

"If this is Kolyat's idea of help, we're all doomed."

"Why?"

"That's Conrad Verner."

Aria shook her head. She had no idea who he was talking about.

"Shepard never told you about him?" Bailey answered his own question. "Hell, why would she? He's Shepard's number one fan. A regular Annie Wilkes, that one."

"Who's Ané-wul'ks?"

Bailey shook his head at Bray. "Didn't you guys read the classics? Jeez!"

Aria no more knew what Bailey was going on about than did Bray, but she could guess. Her frown at this approaching man told the tale. "He's a _Shepard_ fan?"

Bailey groaned. "Not the only one, but surely the most annoying."

Kolyat approached. "Commander Bailey, this is Con—"

"Conrad Verner, I know."

Though he spoke with every ounce of contempt he could dredge up, Conrad seemed not to notice. He stuck out a hand, the smile on his goateed face big as life. "Commander Bailey? You know my name?"

"Shepard's told me about you." And that should have said it all, but instead it seemed to make the loon even happier.

"She's told me about you, too. It's an honor to meet you, sir." Conrad held out his hand and Bailey took it.

An honor? Okay, so maybe he wasn't all that bad, but the look on the salarian's face was a possible clue that everything Shepard had told him about the man had been true. The proof solidified when Verner turned his attention to the asari. She wasn't just any asari, as evidenced by the man's weakened knees. He put a hand on Kolyat's shoulder to steady himself. Even Kolyat seemed confused.

" _Oh. My. God."_ Conrad pointed. "Y-You're Aria T'Loak."

Aria nodded, frowned and took a step backward. She could handle adjutants, the Illusive Man and maybe even take on a Reaper, but this was more than she was prepared to deal with.

"I know because of the markings on your face. Shepard has told me so much about you, too. Ruler of Omega, 'I _am_ Omega. Boss, CEO, _Queen_ if you're feeling dramatic. Don't… _mess…_ with Aria!' Wow! What are _you_ doing on the Citadel?"

"Bailey?" Though she would never admit it, that was a miniscule plea for help. If she could shoot him, she would, but she had a feeling it wouldn't go over well in this crowd.

"Kolyat?" Bailey asked. He didn't have to say more.

Kolyat nodded in understanding. He'd gone his own rounds with Conrad Verner when he'd found him in the tunnels. All he'd had to do was mention his surname and the man was overcome with awe. Though it clearly bothered the asari and the commander, it hadn't bothered Kolyat at all. If the surname was enough to leave someone awestruck, then that was a good thing, worthy of remembrance, as was his father, Thane Krios. Despite their differences, and his resentment of their years apart, Kolyat could not remember a time when the name Krios had not left himself awestruck.

Kolyat smiled, patted Conrad on the back and said, "You are in the company of greatness, to be sure."

"Yes, I am," Conrad said without deviation.

"But it is not this man that I bring to you for assistance, Commander Bailey." He indicated the salarian with a nod.

"He already knows who I am," the salarian said with disdain. "Though, I doubt he remembers my face. Chorban, Commander Bailey. My name is Chorban."

"Oh God," Bailey mumbled. "Not you, too."

"I warned you and the council that something like this would happen, but you refused to listen to me."

"I listened, but there wasn't a damn thing I could do with the information without causing a panic. You saw what happened when people started getting wind of what was coming," Bailey added with a sideways glance at Aria. "And all for what? None of us would have gotten off this station in time anyway."

" _I_ would have," Aria said, returning Bailey's sideways glance. "If you hadn't stalled me."

"Chorban," came a voice clearly that of a volus. Sure enough, one sidled up beside the salarian. Strangely enough, a lone keeper followed behind the volus like a dog. "You left Keepie and I behind."

"I can't help it if the two of you are slow. And stop calling it Keepie. It's a keeper, not a pet!"

Gun still pointed at a disgruntled Kelham, Bray began to laugh. "This is getting more interesting by the second."

Bray's laughter was nails across a chalkboard to Aria. She had had enough. "Would someone please explain this freak show. Time is running short."

"Of course," the salarian said and stepped forward. "I guess I can learn to forgive and forget, given our situation. You say you need to find the council. I can do that for you."

Chorban powered his omni-tool, tapped a command and then turned to face the pliant keeper. As if someone had given a statue life, it went from standing still and practically lifeless to moving across the small space, moving aside anyone who didn't extract themselves from its way fast enough, until it met a wall. Then, its hands moved like mini streaks of lightening along seams in the wall that they could not see. Before they knew it, a panel had come free, dropping down like a miniature console, and a holographic vid screen appeared.

"What the—?" Bailey began, but never finished. He watched in awe, as great as that of Conrad Verner, as the keeper tapped at the vid screen with its pointed fingers, appearing to search through code the likes of which he had never seen. Then, as quickly as before, the vid screen went away, the console lifted back into place, the panel resealed and the keeper turned to face Chorban like a dog that had done a neat trick and now wanted its treat.

Chorban, however, paid the keeper little attention. He instead smiled down at his omni-tool and said, "The Council is as deep in the bowel of the station as we are, somewhere near the Embassies."

 **EEE**

 _ **T**_ he explanations came in time they hardly had to spare. Awe wasn't the word to describe how they felt about Chorban and Jahleed's discovery. That they had the ability to communicate with the keepers was, for Bailey, shocking, and maybe even a little bit alarming. The two scientists had been breaking a serious Citadel law for God only knew how long. They claimed Shepard had helped them at one point in time, and if that were true, the idea was even more egregious because, of all the information Shepard had shared with him over the years, this news certainly wasn't one.

Frustration with being left out of the loop aside, this development proved to be a boon for their mission. They now knew approximately where the council was, and according to Chorban, the keeper had been able to extract the information without alerting Reaper forces to their location. He had "programmed" it, of all things, to mark Reaper signatures as "hostiles." And he claimed, if needs be, he could reprogram other keepers to do their bidding.

"Bidding" seemed a harsh word to Bailey. Sounded too much like slavery. To Aria, however, the salarian's idea of using keepers was genius. What they could accomplish with such a tool might see them through the mission and perhaps even off the station. With a little prodding, she was able to get the salarian to download her a version of his program onto her omni-tool. Problem was, one couldn't use it to summon a keeper. For it to work there needed to be a keeper nearby one could work with one on one. Didn't matter. The chances were good that they would come across one on the next step of their journey.

That next step was decided upon in another space of time they didn't have to spare. They needed to bring the council to Aria's ship, but Aria's ship was surrounded by Reaper ground troops based on Kolyat and Kelham's tales. That meant sending a contingent to take out the threat, while another group traveled to gather the council and see them safely through the tunnels. Aria saw no one fit for either job but herself, though try as she might over the years, she hadn't found a biotic technique that would allow her to be two places at once.

Aria would have to choose—her ship or Tevos.

All of them, including their lone keeper, huddled in one corner of the airshaft and discussed their options.

"So, who do we have that knows their way to Aria's ship?" Bailey counted out the options on his right hand. "Kelham, Kolyat and Mouse."

"But we're going to need firepower where we're going," Bray said. "Kolyat's our best bet. He knows how to use a weapon judging by the way he's packing, and he'll get us within a stone's throw without being observed."

"That's nice, Bray," Aria said. "But you're forgetting the fact that we're sending a salarian, a volus and their pet after the council."

Bray dismissed the two lesser species with a wave of his hand. "Those two couldn't fight their way out of a pyjack invasion."

"Exactly my point," Aria said before Chorban or Jahleed could defend themselves. "They'll need protection."

"And so will the council," Kolyat added.

"I'll have you know Chorban is quite skilled with a weapon," Jahleed said, a pointed prehensor in Bray's face, or as close as his stubby arm could reach.

"Hush, Jahleed," Chorban said. "The asari is incorrect…about the keeper, I mean. It is not a pet! However, we will need a protector, someone far more skilled with a gun than I. I can neural shock an opponent, but my abilities in that regard are not as honed as they should be."

"Honestly," Jahleed began on an intake of breath, "I doubt we'll need much protection in the way of weapons. Light, at most."

Chorban agreed with a nod. "True. The keeper will divert us if necessary, but it should take us straight to the council, and I've no doubt that it will help us to their safe room as well."

"We have worked well with Conrad, so far," Jahleed said, looking first at Conrad's shotgun, then up at the blonde-haired man who was smiling down at him. "He has protected us. Everything he knows, he's learned from Commander Shepard."

Bray rolled all four of his eyes. "Conrad is an idiot."

Conrad stepped forward, pointed a finger somewhere near the vicinity of the batarian (he knew better than to stab that finger in his chest unless he wanted the finger bitten off) and gave him is most indignant frown. "Hey, you'd best watch how you talk about me, lest it get back to Commander Shepard. You won't like her when she's angry."

"You humans are so gullible," Bray said with a disgusted shake of his head. "Shepard would throw you at a Reaper, boy, if she thought it would help her win the war."

Bailey gave Bray a gentle push and stepped between the two. "We don't have time for this. The situation being as it is, I think Jahleed's idea isn't half-bad. Conrad might be an idiot, but he's a capable idiot."

"That's right," Conrad said over Bailey's shoulder. "I'm a capable id—I mean _I'm capable._ I saved a mother and her daughter out there with this shotgun from one of those asari banshee things. I blew its eyes into the back of its head." But he would never, not in a million years, mention what happened to Jenna, or that he had his mental Shepard to thank for the kick in the ass that prompted his bravery. That was best left in his own head.

Jahleed stepped forward. "And the three of us helped rescue the last of those children at the school."

Bailey turned; his eyes alight with a twinge of hope. "You did?"

"You best your ass we did," Conrad said. "They're over there." He pointed a group of children huddling against the wall, the same ones Bray had noted earlier.

"Thank God."

"So, it's settled then." Aria nodded to Verner. "The idiot goes with the salarian, his boyfriend and their pet keeper."

Both Conrad and Chorban gave a series of frustrated exhalations followed by a couple more exclamations, which Jahleed summed up with, "Our relationship is purely professional in nature."

Aria ignored all three. "The rodent is a moot point—up for debate, but he's not particularly important. The toss up is Kolyat or Kelham." Aria gave Kolyat a once over. "The son of an assassin should know his way around a weapon, no doubt."

Kolyat raised his eyebrows. "You knew my father?"

"I'd never met him, or had the good fortune to make use of his services, but I have heard of him. Rumored to be the most skilled assassin in the galaxy. He played the game well, up close, clean. I have a feeling his son would be useful in an assault."

"Perhaps, but I am not my father."

"Kolyat's right," Bailey said, quick to squash Aria's idea. "His skills might be put to better use protecting the council. With a keeper as their guide, and Kolyat taking point, they'll have the council rescued before you can say 'husk.'"

Kolyat nodded. "And we'll take Mouse with us. In the event something happens to our keeper, Mouse will know how to direct us."

"Good deal."

Bray growled and jabbed the barrel of his pistol against Kelham's singed head. "That leaves us this one to lead us to the docks."

"He's not the ideal soldier to bring into battle. He'll probably piss his pants at the sight of a husk, but he knows where to go, so I guess he'll have to do."

"Bite my ass, Bailey," Kelham barked.

Bray jabbed the barrel into his head with more force. "I know how to make you comply, human scum. Don't test me."

Aria knew she wouldn't be leading the charge to rescue Tevos. Perhaps a part of her had always known. Since they had drifted apart, neither had lead any charge to rescue the other. Each had done their own rescuing over the years. When Sovereign had attacked the Citadel two years ago, Aria hadn't sent any urgent message to the Destiny Ascension. If Tevos had died that day, if Shepard had chosen to sacrifice the council for the sake of winning her fight against Sovereign, Aria would have gone on with her life. By the same token, Tevos sent no urgent messages to Aria when adjutants and Cerberus had invaded Omega.

Did it matter?

"Bailey's plan is good," she said, trying to not let the dejection show in voice. "The ship is mine. Bray knows how to pilot it. It's his baby. In his capable hands, with the three of us on weapons, and your group gathering the council, we can probably pull this off."

" _If_ we can even make it off the station," Mouse spoke for the first time since he led them here. "Breaking free of the Citadel's FTL speed is going to be the hard part."

Bailey sighed at the reminder, but said, "Let's cross that ugly bridge when we come to it, all right?"

Aria nodded in the direction of the tunnel Kelham had directed them to. "Let's get this over with."

She was no stranger to species integration. She wouldn't balk at hiring any sort of merc, be he salarian, krogan or elcor. But the sight before her was something of a wonder. A salarian, a volus, an asari, a batarian, a drell, four humans and a keeper, a combination of some of the weakest and yet some of the strongest species their galaxy had to offer, all working together to save the council. She had never been a part of anything like this in her life, not even when she stood side by side with a human and turian against Cerberus. A part of her felt humbled…a very miniscule part, mind you, but the feeling was there. The rest she left to the weapons in their hands and the ones strapped to their backs.

 **EEE**

 _ **N**_ ine of them, and one insensate keeper, began the mission together, taking the tall tunnel single file and in no more hurry than their desire to get off the station before the Reapers completely took over…if they hadn't already. How could they know that in just a very short period of time, everything they thought they knew would be turned upside down on its head and distorted? How could they know that the very woman they had either praised, damned or emulated would be sharing space on the station with them, and staring down an evil more deadly than either of them had faced since the attack began?

At a point many meters into the tunnel, they came to a fork in the road. Two cramped tunnels shot into two different directions. Six of them went left, to the rescue, while four of them went right, to face battle and death.

* * *

 **If you haven't reviewed before, please do so. I love to hear from readers and get their take on what did or did not enjoy about the chapter. I have the next chapter read and edited, so I'll post it in a couple of days. Again, sorry for the long hiatus.**


	14. BackbONE

**This chapter features one original character and breathes a bit more life into the character of Ensign Rodriguez. Whether Bioware's writers had a backstory for her, I don't know, but I enjoyed discovering her character. She figures highly in this one and in future chapters, so I hope you enjoy what I've created here. As for the new character, I originally created Hicox because the character I wanted to the lead the Leviathan Enthrallment Team was Wrex. I so wanted to write him, and had in fact planned to put him in the story. That is until I remembered the story arc at end game. Wrex is with Shepard bolstering his unit before Hammer moves out. I couldn't use him. Thus, I created Hicox (something of an ode to the Hicox in _Inglorious Bastards_ ) to fill his void, but as usually happens, he became more than I expected. **

**So again, I hope you enjoy this chapter. This is one of my favorites ones. :)**

* * *

 _ **MASS EFFECT: ONE**_

* * *

 _"Hope sustains organics during periods of difficulty."_

~Legion~

* * *

 **BackbONE**

 **Earth, London**

 **Before Endgame**

 ** _A_** _buelita_ was what Luciana used to call her. Never the English translation of grandmother or granny, and she certainly would not use her given name. If she wanted to keep the switch off her rear end, she would not use the name Rosa Rodriguez for any reason. That name was reserved for adult use, not grandchildren. Far from Earth, in a backward colony, on a backward moon out in the middle of Council space, Luciana knew the importance of respecting her elders. That way of life had been instilled into her as a very young child. _Abuelita_ made sure of it.

But that did not mean _Abuelita_ was a hard woman. Strict, yes. Stringent in the traditions of her people she was, but not hard. Luciana's fondest memory was of sitting on the back deck of their modular colonists' home. She would bask in the brisk, dusty breeze brought on by the moon Mateo's dry summers while _Abuelita_ brushed her long hair (necessity now led Luciana to cut it short and keep the rest in a ponytail) and told stories of her people's roots in Earth's soil. She would tell of how they migrated across its packed earth for centuries due to persecution or forcible expulsion from their homelands, until, at the dawn of space exploration, _Abuelita_ made the move as a child with her family to a new home.

Luciana had loved hearing those stories, loved the feel of _Abuelita_ 's fingers in her hair, knotting braided pigtails and snapping barrettes. But those were the old days. Gone now, in the blink of an eye when batarian slavers struck in the dead of night. They took the youngest and the strongest, but killed the older. _Abuelita_ had lived eighty years on Mateo, breaking her back to till the hard-packed ground and make something of a life on the rough moon. The batarians had no use for an old lady who could barely walk without the use of her gnarled wooden cane.

There wasn't much about that night Luciana remembered. Some of it had been lost to time, and much of it lost to terror. The mind tended to bury such memories, and Luciana was okay with that. She never wanted to remember the terror of that night for fear of how it may color her existence. What little she did remember came in bursts of her burgeoning biotics at the time. Images of batarians being swept off their feet, launched into the air, coming to land face first in a patch of Mateo's spiny cactus-like plants. (Like cactuses, but not exactly. The plant drew their nourishment from the soil only. It didn't need water to survive. Thus, what grew was not a leafy plant with protective spines. These plants grew in patches of dagger-like protrusions from the ground, hard as steel and just as deadly. They had called them the _espada_ plant and used them to fashion knives and other cutting tools.) But what Luciana never forgot, not ever, was the last thing _Abuelita_ said before she locked her and a small group of other children in an underground bunker, safe from batarian reach.

" _No temas la muerte, hija mía. Morir por otro es vivir."_

For a long time after, after the sound of batarian assault rifles had pilfered the air above the bunker, killing _Abuelita_ and the others with her, their bodies hitting the ground above them with a heavy thud, those words had been gibberish to Luciana. It was only later that she began to question _Abuelita_ 's last words. How does one not fear death? How does one stand in the face of it, even for one as old as _Abuelita_ , and give their life so that another may live? _Morir por otro es vivir…To die for another is to live_. How does death equate to life?

Luciana's eyelids felt heavy as though someone had weighted them with gold. In fact, there was gold. Lamp light reflected off it, burnished and enflamed, like walking into the glory of heaven itself. Someone lay her body down beneath a ceiling lit with a golden light, imbued with saintly apparitions. They seemed to call to her. Her name, accented in _Abuelita_ 's special voice, bounced off the stone walls, descending from the gilded sight above. It came down to her clear as a bell. _Hija mía_ , she called. She was calling her home.

 _Morir por otro es vivir._

From the time she and the other kids had been rescued on Mateo, until the moment of the first explosive shockwave of Cerberus's assault on Grissom Academy, Luciana had pondered _Abuelita_ 's words. She hadn't truly come to understand those words until the start of the Reaper war. She watched many of her fellow school mates die so that others may live, inside the academy and on the battlefield of Palaven. Prangley would have done the same for her a million times over without a second thought. He would have given his life for her or Jack or any member of their team. And yet, Luciana always held back. She always feared death. She could never see herself stepping in front of an oncoming bullet to save another from its evil trap…

…until she did.

Though, it hadn't really been as glorious as that. Luciana hadn't exactly stepped in front of it, had she? And, in point of fact, she had been scared shitless.

She went back, twisting through the rubble of time where she had heard the voice that filtered through the smoke and the rubble of the choir school toward her ear. Like a ghost. _Abuelita_ 's stories of the dead and the afterlife (and her belief that some spirits, depending upon the manner of their death, continued on to haunt the living) had come back to Luciana with bone-chilling reality.

" _Hel—lll—puh…"_

What her tortured mind had conjured, plagued by the stories of old, was a vaporous and vaguely human shape. It reached a phantasmic hand toward her, pleading with eyes of death that were as blue and as cold as ice. Somewhere ahead of her, Prangley lurked in the smoke, moving toward the cathedral. Somewhere behind her was the toughest chick in the galaxy, the biggest badass Luciana had ever known…next to _Abuelita,_ that is. She was safe. No damn ghost, innocent and recently dead or not, would have the guts to even attempt possession. Not with Jack around. In Luciana's mind, Jack could take down a Reaper if given the proper motivation.

And maybe that's what drew her from the forward path. That and…

" _Pleeeeassee…"_

Fears aside, Luciana moved toward the pleading voice. The length of her meager years, as well as a few notches of life's reality under her belt, Luciana knew better than to believe in the existence of ghosts. Science had pretty much proven that when you're dead, you're dead. You don't float out of your body in some incorporeal form to haunt, or otherwise assist, the realm of the living. Of course, science had yet to understand, or even make sense, of what happened to a person when he or she died, and it probably never would. People were going to believe whatever they wanted to believe on that subject, no matter what science would attempt to prove. Still, Luciana had set her thinking cap on straight. She wasn't a little girl anymore listening to Abuelita's ghost stories. That was a voice she'd heard. Someone had just said "help" and "please."

One look over her shoulder told her Jack was still lost in the smoke behind her. She could have called to her, let her know she would be veering off their intended path, but she didn't want to draw the attention of any unwanted listeners. Cringing in fear, and hoping Jack wouldn't get royally pissed with her, Luciana diverted into an area where the smoke was thickest. She slipped between the plumes and climbed over a mound of debris, omni-tool at the ready, scanning the darkness for any signs of life. She had begun to think she had imagined the voice when a partial orange shape appeared upon the holographic screen and the light from her assault rifle illuminated a reaching right hand. A human hand.

Luciana gasped, choked on a mouthful of smoke and almost dropped her rifle. Not a good idea on the battlefield. She let her unsteady feet lead her forward. The light from her rifle illuminated an armored body half buried in rubble. She grasped the hand, felt the strong and steady grip of one grateful to be found alive. Her light illuminated a face that gave evidence of just such gratitude.

The helmet of an N7 Paladin lay a few centimeters away. Luciana had no time to contemplate if it had been knocked loose or if he'd removed it himself. She simply found herself on her knees, removing the rubble of brick and mortar from the man's body one piece at a time.

Luciana wouldn't look him in the face. She couldn't, even though she felt his eyes on her like two probing x-rays. She knew what Jack would say. Leave him. Their job was to save those that were still living. It's what Major Kirrahe would have said, too. Had said, in fact. _"Do not stop to help those who are dying. In war, one must learn to control one's emotions, stifle one's sympathy. Many there are that yet live and have the capacity to fight. It is those we must save."_

It hadn't sat right in Luciana's heart the moment Kirrahe had said it at the outset of their mission. She couldn't be that callous. So, she kept pulling brick after brick until she had unearthed him, moving them as carefully and as quietly as she could. It wouldn't do to draw unwanted attention and end the man's life before she could save it.

She wasn't a medic, but she knew pain when she heard it. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth and stained the outside of his seared and pummeled armor. He was injured, and badly. Luciana scanned his body with a shaky omni-tool. Her heart dropped. He was broken in places medi-gel alone couldn't fix.

"Oh my God," she whispered, and felt sick.

One leg was shattered. His ribs were a mess. God only knew if fractured pieces of bone had penetrated his lungs, but the blood on his teeth meant there wasn't anything good going on inside. That's when she met his eyes. The light from her rifle shined in his face, glinting off eyes the color of ice, and full of pain and hopelessness. Yet, underneath was an overwhelming expression of shame.

"You're just a girl," he wheezed.

His words froze her at first. It was how she had been thinking of herself since this whole war started for her. _I'm just a girl. What can I do?_ Jack had shown her she was more than a girl from Mateo who missed her grandmother. Jack had shown her she could be equally as badass a biotic. For the first time, staring into the N7 soldier's eyes, Luciana actually believed it.

She shook her head at the soldier, hoping to banish his guilt. He hadn't drawn an innocent little girl to his rescue. She was perfectly capable of saving his life. "No, I'm a soldier, _and_ a biotic."

Medic or not, Luciana went to work. She'd been given a crash course in battlefield medicine on Palaven. She'd learned from a turian medic how to effectively administer medi-gel in order to treat specific areas, like broken bones or lacerations. He'd even taught her the basics of splinting using mass effect fields, something she had no difficulty creating with her biotics.

"I'm gonna get you out of here. Okay?"

The mortification had not left his eyes. "Leave me. I'm dead anyway. Get yourself someplace safe."

She shook her head. The mere effort of speaking sounded painful for him. "Don't talk. You don't have the strength for it."

Mending what she could of his ribs, and encasing his torso and his left leg in a binding mass effect field that acted as a temporary cast, she checked his spine for any injury that would prevent him from walking. She would hate the idea of having to leave him with only the promise of coming back with a stretcher. Anything could happen in between, which would prevent her from coming back. Thankfully, his spine was sound.

She next went about removing the last bit of rubble over his left arm. It wasn't any better than his leg, and his omni-tool was a shattered mess. No wonder his body was in such shape. An N7 Paladin used his omni-tool as a holographic shield. The things were near impenetrable. Luciana knew. Many of the Cerberus soldiers that had invaded Grissom Academy had been similarly equipped. She hadn't been able to get a shot—bullet or biotic—through the deceptively dense hologram. This soldier hadn't been so lucky.

Luciana finished binding his arm, having tossed the ruins of his omni-tool somewhere into the darkness. Through it all, she'd felt his eyes upon her. Two hot coals pleading with her to forget he ever existed if only to save herself. And she knew why. There's no way this could end well. Jack and Major Kirrahe had been right. If whatever had destroyed this building decided to come back (she knew it was a Harvester, just knew it), no amount of biotics would save her or him. But that's not how she had been taught. Her heart tended to override her thoughts. This was sometimes helpful, mostly detrimental, but when it took over, Luciana acted. Just as _Abuelita_ had.

Screw the Harvester. Screw the Reapers. She wouldn't leave this man here to die. Sometimes, to sacrifice one's life to save another was to live.

"Okay," she whispered to him, forcing herself to look into those pained eyes. "Do you think you can put weight on your right leg?"

A shot rang out. An unholy growl followed.

"Shit," she cried, her voice shaky.

This war had accustomed her to knowing the difference between assault rifle and pistol fire, and Luciana heard the all too familiar sound of the STG's preferred weapon, the Scorpion, followed by the projectile's ensuing explosion. She also heard the distinct sound of a sniper rifle.

The battle had renewed. Their slim chance had just grown slimmer.

"Go," the soldier said. "Get out of here."

Luciana looked over her shoulder with wild eyes. The battle wasn't taking place here. It was happening outside the school. The salarians must have engaged Reaper forces outside the cathedral. "Hell no," she told him, raising her voice above the sounds of battle. "I'm not leaving you here."

Bracing up the soldier's right leg, giving the sole of his boot a firm grip on the ground, Luciana grabbed his right hand in a wrestler's grip and put her left hand at the back of his neck for support. Jack's lessons on assistive biotics hadn't gone over Luciana's head. She used just enough to give her the extra strength she would need without popping the man's head off his shoulders.

"Ready?" she said. "One, two…three."

Of everyone in her class, Luciana was the shortest. Everyone had to look down at her. Even Jack, and she was short statured herself. (Some of the guys had taken to calling her Little Lucy, a term she hated more than her height. Jack always defended her though. "Little Lucy could probably kick your ass, tough guy," she would say. Luciana loved that about her.) So, lifting this man, who was as tall as she was short, took everything Luciana had. She grit her teeth with the effort. Even with the bit of biotics she used to give her an edge, her arms trembled and jerked like the fish _Abuelita_ used to catch on the banks of a green river near their home. And so did the solider.

Luciana felt him floundering. His pain, despite the medi-gel and the mass effect fields to keep him still, must have been excruciating. He bellowed, hoarse and agonizing. His skin went from burning hot to cold and clammy.

"Don't pass out on me, damn you," she cried, feeling the trembling in his right leg with the effort to hold himself erect. She moved her left hand from his neck to a spot between his shoulder blades, and then heard herself saying the same phrases Jack used to bolster courage when Luciana was ready to give up in her training. "Buck up, soldier." "Take a deep breath and fight it." "You can do this. I know you can." "I have faith in you." Each epithet she said in between deep breaths, supporting his body against hers no matter the hell he inflicted upon her, and little by little his breaths came easier, his right leg stabilized, his own strength returned.

His brow resting on the top of her head, she heard his harsh whisper above the sounds of battle. "Thank you."

Steady as he now was, Luciana wouldn't let his gratitude go to her head. They had no time for that anyway. Turning herself around, she put his right arm around her shoulder, let him use her as a crutch while she pointed her rifle forwards. She needed to get back to the team, couldn't let them leave her and her acquisition behind. But the going was slow, and every movement for the paladin was as the puncturing of a thousand bullets. Only a few meters distance and tears were streaming down his face. Luciana's shoulders and back were on fire supporting him. By the time they made it out into the dark of war, the battle (which had seemed to last forever) was finally ending. Luciana caught sight of a krogan bashing in the brains of a Marauder with its own severed limb and thought she was going to be sick. Her stomach churned and she thought for sure she would lose her grip on the soldier, spill him like a sack of potatoes onto the ground and break him into a million tiny pieces…when she heard her name.

"Rodriguez!"

Strange how it had felt seeing Prangley again, like she hadn't seen him in ages. He'd been like a big brother, always looking out for her. Remembering how he had appeared out of nowhere, his eyes wide, the fear for her plain as day on his face, brought forth a smile. Or, at least, she thought she'd smiled. She couldn't remember for sure. It all got a little fuzzy from there. Prangley had relieved her, taken her place beneath the soldier's right arm and she'd almost collapsed. Somewhere in between, the major had appeared. Her only memory of him was seeing that he had taken the soldier's opposite side. All she could remember after that was the odd, stinging pain in her lower back. Her back had tensed, and she jumped as if someone had goosed her, but she had been able to follow the pack led by the brain-bashing krogan. She hadn't the wherewithal to understand why each step got harder and more painful. Surely, her body had just been reacting to stress and the soldier's weight upon her.

Luciana knew better now. She couldn't quite remember, but at some point, she had seen the blood on her hands. She had felt it seeping down her lower abdomen, settling into the waistband of her pants, down the front of her legs. She'd been shot. Somewhere. Somehow. It didn't matter now, did it? The soldier was safe. That's all that mattered. She had done as she promised. Something good had come out of this ugly war after all.

 _Hija mía._

A hand, cold and nearly as lifeless as her chilled skin, slipped into her own. She opened her heavy eyelids to see _Abuelita_ 's face, ringed by the saintly apparitions hovering over her. She saw, not the old woman she remembered, her skin wrinkled and leathered by time and too much sun, but the beauty with the dark hair and dark eyes she had seen in photographs. She had Luciana's hand and she was beckoning her to that golden place above the dark clouds. She understood now what _Abuelita_ meant. Luciana no longer feared death. With her death, given in behalf of another, would come a new life, one in which she would see _Abuelita_ again. They would sit on the back deck and share stories together.

Luciana smiled and grasped _Abuelita_ 's hand.

 **EEE**

 _ **J**_ acob called the room they were in _the baptistry._ Didn't really matter why the religious sorts called it that, because for Jack, it held a different meaning altogether. She understood what it meant to be baptized. She had been, several times over, and not for the sake of some religious ideology.

Baptize meant many things: to immerse, to plunge, even to designate or to rename. Jack couldn't count all the names she'd gone by over the years ("Jack" was the final, the only one she had left and cared for), nor could she name all the ways she had been baptized. The ones she kept were the ones she'd inked onto her body. Baptism by torture, by torment, by violence. Two were left to experience, one of which (baptism by death) had not yet touched her. The other she now unwillingly bathed in—baptism by blood.

This was not blood taken intentionally. Jack had taken someone's lifeblood enough times over her short life to be baptized more than she cared to count. She'd kept a record of the most damning ones in the shape of faces on her left arm.

This was innocent blood. Jack watched it pool onto the marble floor five paces away. Rodriguez's blood, as red as Jack's rage and as black as her soul. Prangley kneeled near the crown of the girl's head, talking to her to keep her eyes opened, to keep her conscious, but it wasn't working. Her eyes had already glazed over into unconsciousness. Jacob knelt at Rodriguez's feet, holding her down in case she thrashed. Yet again, his efforts were in vain. The girl had become as still as a tomb. And the bastard Rodriguez risked her life to save lay next to her on the floor, holding her cold fingers as if he could transfer some of his own life to her.

Jack could not go near. To go near as Samara worked to save Rodriguez would be like treading on holy ground. She found a place to sit (because standing was out of the question; her legs were like rubber) on top of a three-tiered platform beneath a perplexing depiction of kings and queens, priests and saints on the marbled wall above, and clasped her shaking hands over her trembling lips. She could not speak. She could not pray, and damn it all to hell, despite where she was, Jack could not find any hope.

"Is she going to make it?"

This was Jack's question, but she had not asked it. The question had come from the Alliance soldier, the paladin. The one Jacob called Hicox.

Working feverishly, Samara answered. "I have been able to stop the bleeding, Colonel, but she's lost more than I can assist her in replacing."

"Is she bleeding internally?" Prangley asked breathlessly over Rodriguez's pale face. Seeing her closed eyes, his anguish doubled.

"Not anymore. I've repaired the damage as best I can with what we have. We must let her rest."

"This is my fault," Prangley whispered. "I should have—"

"Don't trouble yourself, boy," Hicox rasped, the accent distinctly British. "The fault lies with me."

"You're goddamn right it's your fault, you son of a bitch." Jack spoke behind trembling hands. "Who the hell are you anyway?"

"Hey," Jacob said, getting to his feet. "Colonel Hicox just happens to be one of the most highly decorated officers in the Alliance military. He practically gave his life so the four of us could get out of that choir school alive. We thought he _was_ dead!"

Hicox shook his head painfully. "Taylor, don't—"

"Like hell I won't. The man deserves some respect, Jack."

Jack sneered. "I'd respect him if he was dead."

She glared hard at the colonel and he stared back, unflinchingly, taking her abuse as one who deserved it. Feeling singed by her own ugliness, Jack turned away, her gaze sliding to Prangley. In his eyes, she found nothing to recommend what was good about her. The boy's face was a twisted mask of disbelief. He knew Jack was a hard-ass. She never bent to their whining, even in the toughest of training. But she always had heart. She always cared. This was the first time he'd ever seen the old Jack. The cold Jack. Fear had a way of bringing her out. Prangley didn't like what he saw.

"He's right, you know," Zaeed said with as soft a voice as he was capable. He had taken a seat on the platform beside her when Samara began her ministrations upon both Hicox and Rodriguez. He now lightly knocked Jack upon the thigh with his fist, a gentle chastisement. "All five of us would be toast right now if it weren't for Hicox. We thought he'd gone kablewey with the school when that Harvester took it out. Buried him in the rubble. Poor bastard's broken up in a hundred places right now. He'll be lucky to last the night."

Jack still had trouble finding her empathy, buried as it was in the rubble of her fear. She may not ever have the chance of hearing a child's voice call her Mom or Mamma. Shit, she didn't even know if she liked the idea. Herself? Big, tattooed and pregnant? What a sight that would be! Losing Rodriguez would be, to Jack, no different than having a child snatched from her arms and watching its life snuffed right before her eyes. It would kill her. Not physically, but mentally. The Jack she was now would die. How could she even give a damn about the Alliance soldier?!

Finding her strength, Jack left the baptistry for the cathedral's deepest recesses, its consolation of darkness. She weaved her steps among toppled pews; her only light an angry, iridescent biotic glow. She followed the hypnotic, flickering light of battle illuminating the cathedral's front windows. She wished to be up there, fighting, killing, loosing her aggression upon the Reapers and their bastard children. Instead, she waited. She agonized. What she wouldn't give to rip this place apart stone by stone, to hear the satisfying shatter of glass, the crunch of masonry as she reduced the cathedral to rocks and sand. She would boil inside if she couldn't.

She hadn't felt this agitated, this pent up since she walked the ruined halls of the Teltin Facility, reliving the past. But that was all behind her now. Those days were over. No use reliving that old rage. Time to smother it in work, in something useful. This wasn't the days on the Normandy when all she had to do was sit and churn in her little hidey-hole. They had a job to do. She just had to find the one who could give her a task. Anything to take her mind off the hell in her heart.

Jack left the flickering and the distant sound of battle behind, pulling herself deeper into the cathedral. Sometime during the insanity of discovering Rodriguez and trying to save her life, she had seen Kirrahe pull Grunt aside. If Grunt were the one leading the LET mission, the two would be discussing how the future of the mission stood and what they still had left to accomplish. Jack wanted in on it. She needed to fill her mind.

Following the path her inadvertent eyes had seen them take, she crossed to the opposite side of the cathedral from the place where one of her kids lay dying. Voices crept to her ear like whispers in a catacomb. One of them was the unmistakable crusty curmudgeon of a krogan she'd once smashed an entire bottle of alcohol upon. Jack followed it. The other voice, though not so crusty, held enough of an edge to garner the respect, if not the love, of the curmudgeon. Jack knew that voice. She heard it sometimes in her dreams. This voice spurred her onward to greater endeavors, pushed her past her perceived limits, gave praise where praise wasn't warranted. In fact, it was her bottle of alcohol Jack had busted over Grunt's head, in her apartment, soaking her carpet, bringing a frown to her face when she stepped in it first thing of a hung-over morning.

Jack allowed herself a small yet wistful smile. "Shepard."

The last few steps she took at a jog. A sequestered chapel (to God only knew which saint) glowed a faint and jittery blue, reflecting off the gilded walls like light upon the surface of water.

"Thanks," said the curmudgeon inside the chapel, "for getting me out of that tank."

The softer voice answered with words that anyone on the battlefield both longed for and dreaded to hear. "It's been an honor."

If Jack's heart hadn't yet rent in two, it came near to the breaking point at the sound of that voice saying those words. Hope was in short supply here. Jack needed more than honor to lift what sprinklings of hope yet lived within her.

"Same here, Shepard."

Two, three more steps was all she had left, but like everything else in her life, Jack came up short. The jittery blue glow dissipated, leaving only white lantern light as she stepped into the chapel, breathless. Grunt, Kirrahe, and Rentola turned at her entrance. She'd made enough noise.

"Was that Shepard?" She knew it was. She had to ask, and for once, she didn't care how desperate she sounded.

"Yeah," Grunt said, looking somewhat forlorn. At least she wasn't the only one hit by Shepard's talk of honor.

"She okay?"

 _Let her be okay. God, let her be. If she's not I'm gonna lose my shit for sure!_ That was as close to a prayer as Jack would ever come.

"Yeah," Grunt continued. "She's good. She _looked_ good. Same ol' Shepard."

That was good news, but Jack still didn't like the look of Grunt. "Then what's wrong? Don't dick me around, Grunt. You couldn't hide how you feel no more than you can hide behind a salarian."

Grunt gave a terse laugh, momentarily tickled by Jack's half joke, half insult. It was as good as a head-butt. Still, it didn't change the fact that… "Shit's about to get real, Jack, _real fast._ "

Jack didn't like the looks on either of their faces. Forlornness aside, a battle fever had been beaten into them, adhered into their very bones as if with an infernal heat, but mingled within it a cognizant foreboding.

"What's going on?"

Kirrahe stepped around Grunt. He seemed to have aged a week since she last saw him. "There's much to tell you, Jack. Suffice it to say, the end of this war is coming, and there can be only two outcomes—victory…or utter annihilation."

 **EEE**

 _ **L**_ eviathan—an aquatic race, older than the lifespan of some stars, and yet the first to be duped by the Reapers, they once had quite a unique hold upon ancient races. Cave paintings reveal they had once been worshiped as gods, but as the future would play out, their deification came not from acts of mercy or deeds of goodwill. The creatures known as Leviathan (for who knows what their names once were), possessed an innate ability to telepathically communicate and influence the behavior of other species. In ancient days, this influence extended beyond what future mankind would call assistive. Godlike in their thinking, Leviathan enthralled entire species to serve them as they moved throughout the galaxy.

In Jack's estimation, their abilities made them no better than their creation—the Reapers (and in the back of her mind, she worried about what future they may have with these guys as temporary allies). No point in rehashing Leviathan's major screw-up when it came to their artificial creation. When you play with fire, eventually you get burned. Served them right, but at the same time, Jack could have gone a lifetime without ever knowing what Leviathan did to royally nut punch the galaxy for millenniums. Still, their existence gave the future an edge.

Leviathan revealed no name for what the Alliance called "artifacts." They were iridescent spheres that essentially served as Leviathan's eyes upon the galaxy, while they hid like frightened children from those that sought their annihilation. But the artifacts had other, more important uses—enthrallment. Initially used to enthrall in an effort to banish all memory of their existence, once found out, Leviathan agreed (maybe strong-armed might be a better way to describe Shepard's methods) to use the artifacts to aid in the war. It worked on anyone—the good, the bad, the ugly, the intelligent, the dumb-as-rocks; and guess what, boys and girls? It worked on Reapers, too. Jack didn't exactly like the idea. Hell, she hated it. Anything that could control or dominate another held a special place of contempt in the black part of her heart…but she could see its potential for ending the war.

Thus came into being a little group known as the Leviathan Enthrallment Team—an idea conceived of by Admiral Hackett himself. And, Jack had to concede, it was a good idea.

The LET's mission was to get the artifacts behind enemy lines. A small team, hand-picked by some of the highest brass in the Alliance military, who wouldn't draw much attention, could navigate the ruins of London and was in the habit of conducting high-risk operations: one, a tank-bred krogan super soldier engendered for battle; two, an asari justicar sworn to uphold justice and defend the weak come what may; three, a former Cerberus operative and Alliance soldier who'd studied and experienced as much about Reaper domination as Commander Shepard; and four, a fierce mercenary soldier who had garnered enough respect for his battle skills to be feared both outside and within military ranks.

Jack had an idea the majority of them had come with a certain someone's recommendation.

With command of the team given to the Alliance's own Colonel Hicox, for both his highly decorated renown in battle stratagem and his knowledge of the famed London Underground, the team's first job was to set up a triangulation of fire. Using the antiquated "tube" system (the future having replaced underground transportation with shuttle and skycars), the LET would covertly navigate London, surreptitiously placing the artifacts (shielded until the time to use them had come) in key locations.

Though fallen into disuse, with abandoned tube cars left blocking some lanes, the London Underground was still a viable transportation system. Transportation by foot, that is. The five-man team started at what was once called the Oxford Circus Station. The same blood-red-bricked station it had been hundreds of years ago, the Oxford Circus Station continued to hold an entrance into the old tube system, now kept in museum-like quality for tourists.

Five team members, five artifacts, five key locations.

From Oxford Circus Station, they would march the underground system to Green Park Underground, placing the first of their artifacts atop what was left of The Ritz. Then onto Hyde Park Corner Underground and the Wellington Arch, a particularly dangerous location, nearly in the thick of battle. Using a combination of stealth, biotics, and firepower, the five managed to fight their way toward their next location, the arch's quadriga—a bronze sculpture of a four-horse chariot, horses rearing and neighing in the excitement of battle, upon which rides a small boy. Behind him stands a winged feminine figure, holding a laurel wreath in her outstretched hand, as though to pronounce victory. Upon this bronzed laurel wreath, Samara used her biotic abilities to place the second artifact. There it now rested, a crown of potential triumph.

From Hyde Park Corner they ventured into Victoria Station, where the plan was to follow the underground toward the St. James Park station, and place the third artifact atop the highest building. That didn't happen, however.

Only the Reapers could truly say how they figured out their plan. Somehow, they tracked their movements, found them within Victoria Station. The ensuing fight led out into the streets, where no place they sought shelter proved safe. If it hadn't been for the colonel's idea to cut straight for the cathedral, none of them would have made it. The straight cut hadn't turned out to be as straight as the colonel might have liked. Twisting and turning through the open streets of London, dodging bullets and Brutes, had led them first to the choir school at the rear of the cathedral, where a Harvester seemed to have been waiting to pluck them one at a time off the ground. The colonel's quick thinking got them inside, but the Harvester's bombardment nearly proved their downfall. He'd gotten them out at the cost of his own well-being, drawing the Harvester's attention as the four of Shepard's former team members made it to safety inside the heavily shielded cathedral.

The very place the STG team had been commissioned to perform a rescue. But, as Jack learned, the LET's mission was supposed to have gone much differently. As in any war, things change and not always for the better. LET should have moved onward to Westminster Station and Big Ben, then to Changing Cross Underground, where the fifth and final artifact was to be placed in Trafalgar Square atop Nelson's Column. Then, homeward bound to Piccadilly Circus and back to Forward Operations by way of their entrance, the Oxford Circus Station. The final outcome being to enthrall the Reapers, make them turn on and wipe each other out. While the Reapers are busy worrying about defeating their own kind, it would give the Alliance and other military the chance to undermine the headway the Reapers had gained over the galaxy. If it worked on Earth, they could implement this strategy on other planets. If it worked at all, they might just have a chance of winning the war.

Looking at Kirrahe, Grunt and Rentola, Jack had begun to guess that their potential victory fluttered like a shredded flag in the feral winds of battle. Hold though it may, it was ragged and torn, the ropes mooring it to the flagpole frayed. It wouldn't take much for it to splinter and rip away, flung as if by hurricane-like winds, lost forever. What did they have left to place their hope upon?

If one were to look at a map, or know anything about the general layout of the city of London, you might already have begun to suspect where they center of the noose lay. Seen aerially, the lines connecting these locations might appear in the shape of a duck's head (and, in fact, Zaeed had comically coined their mission Operation Duck Head). What sat neatly within the duck's head were three parks—verdantly lush with every sort of tree and shrub, and a lake full of the operation's name sake, with swans and geese thrown in for good measure. Not anymore. Everything that was once alive and beautiful about these great parks had been laid to waste. It's what sat at the center of the park that drew military attention, what their triangulation of artifacts centered around.

It used to be Buckingham Palace and the Victoria Memorial, but those constructions were gone. Five hundred years of British history obliterated in a matter of seconds. What stood in its place now was something insipid, unspeakable in comparison. Like the cactus plants that lived in Rodriguez's memory, these were dagger-like protrusions rising from the rubble of Buckingham Palace; three tall and imposing structures that ripped the skyline with clinical precision, dwarfing even The Shard. They sat in a semicircle around a similar set of structures that were only a fourth of their size. Something would happen here, something that would draw the attention of anyone still alive as far as the eye could see.

Jack knew exactly what that something was. She had watched it descend from the sky and slam into the Earth like Excalibur into hewn stone. Kirrahe and Grunt hardly needed to tell her what was at stake, but Jack wasn't the only one in the cathedral.

Kirrahe led the four of them back to the baptistry where Rodriguez still lay unconscious and clinging to life above the tomb of a long dead cardinal buried beneath the floor. Next to her, their illustrious commander, Hicox lay broken with nothing to do but breathe through the pain. They had given him what medi-gel and pain suppressors they could afford to give. The rest was up to him to endure until they could be rescued… _if_ they could be rescued.

Gritting his teeth between shallow breaths (broken ribs being a hell of an obstacle to that which we all take for granted), Hicox caught the major's dark eyes and asked, "What have you learned, Major?"

Kirrahe nodded, a shimmering air of solemnity about him like a shroud over hardened armor. He was tough for a salarian, but what he had to say wasn't going to be easy. "As you all know, we still have a mission to complete, and though this war seems as if it will drag on into oblivion, there will be an end. There have been several developments that your team may well be unaware of since your… _incarceration_ inside a house of worship."

"Whatever it is, it can't be good?" Zaeed said from where he leaned against the marbled walls.

Jack kneeled beside Rodriguez, placed a hand on her cool forehead and huffed. "It is, and yet it isn't."

"You mean the light in the distance," Samara said, drawing a disconcerted frown from Hicox, who knew nothing of any developments since being entombed within the school's rubble. "Don't you?"

Save for Shepard, Samara had always been the most perceptive of the Normandy SR-2's first crew. Maybe it had something to do with being an asari, or maybe even because she was a justicar. Who knew? Whatever it was, it had seemed to Jack that Samara could read minds.

She watched the justicar narrow her pale blue eyes, as disconcerted as her prostrate commander below. "I watched it come down through the clouds from on a high perch." She pointed upward, toward the front of the cathedral where she must have been on lookout. "I have never seen anything like it before. It does not appear to be a weapon."

"Samara's right," Jacob said. "She showed me. So, what the hell is it? More Reapers?"

"Yes…and no," Kirrahe said, one eyebrow going up.

"Stop beating the pyjack, salari…uh, _Major_." Grunt would have given the salarian commander a smack on the arm for leaving his comrades to hang on a ledge of suspicion, but his strength would have knocked the little guy to the ground. He directed his force upward instead. "That's the damn Citadel up there!"

The pronouncement met with a litany of questions and dropped jaws, prompting Kirrahe to throw the tank-bred an ill-humored smirk. "Just the sort of reaction I was attempting to avoid… _krogan_."

Grunt…grunted.

"The Citadel?" the colonel asked from his place on the floor. "Are you certain? How?"

"Most assuredly certain, Colonel," Kirrahe answered while activating his omni-tool.

Jack rose slowly to her feet as she and everyone else watched a holographic video appear from the major's omni-tool display. The recording, clearly taken from a distant satellite, showed the sun-dappled and brilliant blue curvature of the Earth in one corner of the frame. In the other, an object approached. Cylindrical, but opened like a flower in daytime, its petals absorbing the rays of the sun. Yet, as it neared the pull of Earth's gravity, it began to close. Jack had seen the vids the first time a loan Reaper had attacked the Citadel. She could remember seeing it closing in upon itself probably for the first time that anyone could remember other than maybe the asari or krogan. Watching the nyctinastic change happen again for the second time in her life brought a cold chill to her skin. Not simply because the modification was unusual to the mind—it was—but because of its position above Earth. The light that shot from its base into Earth's atmosphere, as evidenced by the continuing vid, was almost as eerie.

"Holy shit," Jack whispered.

Zaeed harrumphed. "You can say that again."

The questions came again. How did the Citadel get to Earth? Who's controlling it? What does it mean? What is the light emanating from its base? What is it doing?

All good questions, and all questions Kirrahe would answer much as Admiral Anderson would explain to his soldiers inside Forward Operations, several miles from their position. And Jack listened, attempting to numb herself to the implications but finding herself incapable.

The Citadel seized by the Reapers. Thousands of people trapped like rats in a cage. The beam of light no more than a mass-relay-like conduit designed to transport corpses and other matter from the surface onto the Citadel. For what? To make another Reaper like the one Shepard and the rest of the crew took out inside that Collector vessel?

But that wasn't even the worst of it. It's what the allied forces had in mind that shook Jack to the core. Hammer was their name for the ground forces. They would storm the conduit, find a way onto the Citadel and open the arms, all so that they could attach some goddamn super weapon they coined the Crucible.

And who was to lead this mission? Who would they send ahead of anyone else to penetrate the Reaper's defenses? The only one who had ever done it before, _several times before_ —Commander Shepard.

Jack felt sick. Her legs gave out on her as they had a moment ago. She found herself beside Rodriguez's still form once again. They all felt it. This wasn't going to be a happy ending victory. The final push would be nothing short of hell and for anyone brave enough and strong enough to make it all the way to the end, there wasn't going to be anyone handing out medals. The only thing awaiting them would be death. Whether it be an honorable death would be up to the one at the finish line. But what could Jack have expected? What could anyone of them have expected? If anyone were going to make the ultimate sacrifice at the end of all things, it would be Shepard. It had to be, didn't it?

No one inside the baptistry had the heart to speak. What could they say? They had all been touched by Shepard in some way. She had inspired them, strengthened them, mothered and molded them. She was their arch, their backbone. Humanity and the fate of the galaxy wasn't what brought each and every one of them into this fight. It was Shepard. It was always for Shepard.

This was the collective thought of all except for one of them, and it was he who spoke through gritted teeth when no one else could. "I know of your commander," Hicox wheezed painfully. "She's one of the bravest Alliance soldiers I've never had the pleasure to meet. Obdurate in the face of insurmountable odds, unflinching in her duty to her fellow man…"

"Valiant," Samara said.

"Tenacious," followed Jacob.

Kirrahe nodded. "An honorable warrior."

"Goddamn brilliant, I'd say," Zaeed said.

Grunt raised his plated head in respect. "Unequalled in battle."

Jack lowered hers. "And stubborn as shit," she added to the list, knowing Shepard wouldn't have allowed anyone else to take up the commission of dealing the Reapers the final blow.

A hand touched her calf where she had stretched out a leg alongside Rodriguez. Jack looked up to the placatory eyes of the colonel. "All of which makes her the best one for the job. She'll accomplish more than any of us could. I say let's not speak her eulogy just yet."

She was halfway tempted to jerk her leg away from his touch. Her animosity toward the man responsible for Rodriguez's state had not yet abated, but at least he was attempting to appease her. His words were some of the truest of Shepard Jack had ever heard. If anyone could turn this war in their favor, save them all from what Pebbles had called "utter annihilation," it was Shepard. If it meant her life, Shepard would give it without a second thought. It pissed Jack off and it hurt like a son of bitch, but she was proud to say she had once endured under that stubbornness, served the valiant knight, basked in her brilliance, and fought alongside the honorable warrior whose tenacious presence on the battlefield went unequalled, even dwarfed within the shadow of a Reaper.

 _Give'em hell, Shepard._

Heart lifted, if only for a brief moment, Jack gave the colonel a nod and got back on her feet. She needed to be strong for her kids. They needed to see in her what she had once seen in Shepard. She looked sideways at Prangley and saw pride in the easy grin that transformed his face. He was a handsome kid. She prayed he had a chance to live through this. Giving the top of his head a ruffle, she put on the warrior's mask and faced the rest of the troop.

"I say we give'em hell; back Shepard and the Hammer team up. Make'em rue the day they ever set foot on planet Earth!"

"Fuckin' A!" Zaeed said in the midst of lighting a cigar.

Grunt hammered his fists together. "Damn straight! Let's forget about playing with these stupid balls and take the fight to the Reapers."

Jacob brandished his weapon. "I'm all for it."

"And I'm glad to see that all of you are," Kirrahe said, his voice firm and unwavering as the rest, but Jack sensed a big BUT coming. "However, we have not yet been relieved of our duty."

"What?!" The grumpy question came from a grumpy krogan.

"The Leviathan Enthrallment Team still has a mission to complete. Correct, Colonel?"

Hicox nodded, but didn't answer right away, eagerly awaiting the cigarette Zaeed had lit for him at the end of his cigar. He took a deep draw, ignoring the pain that bunched his brow together, held it a moment, and then slowly, carefully exhaled a stream of white smoke. The pain seemed to slide from him like water.

"Major's correct. I was instructed, no matter what, to set the trap. It would appear our mission has now become a backup plan."

Prangley looked from Hicox to Jack. "Backup plan? What does that mean?"

"A distraction." But it wasn't Jack who answered. Samara stepped forward. "We use the artifacts to draw attention away from Hammer. We leave them shielded, but we no longer hide in the shadows. We remain in the open, our intensions made clear as day. We draw their attention."

"Red-herring," Kirrahe said with a smile.

Prangley nodded at Jack. "Like when we imploded the building."

"You got it, kid."

"Fuckin' A!"

"Damn straight!"

"What's our window?" Hicox asked with a second painless draw on his cigarette. Jack was beginning to wonder whether it was a cigarette after all, and not something a tad more potent.

Kirrahe passed a glance among the group. "Hammer moves in less than two hours."

Smoke billowed about the colonel's face as he looked with intent at Kirrahe. "You have little time, old man."

With those words, Hicox handed command of LET over to the salarian major as a relay runner might hand over a baton. There was little fanfare in the act, but it was the spur that set them in motion. LET had grown in the space of an hour from a five-man team to a team of sixteen. More than a squad, not close to a platoon, but more than enough to draw the attention of Reaper and friend. Injured or not, Hicox's importance in the mission—to lead the team through the London Underground—was over. Pebbles knew London well enough to lead the mission onward, and he took to it like a frog to a mucky pond.

 **EEE**

 _ **L**_ ights doused. Silence reigned. The cathedral had become a cavern. A slight cough became a hacking wheeze. The shift of a foot, a hideous hiss. Controlling the body's commonplace movements and functions, like breathing, had become an imperative, for these sounds were nothing compared to the shuffling that had begun to sound outside the cathedral. Scraping. Scratching. Sniffing. It sounded at the windows, at the doors, sniffing for weaknesses, ferreting out signs of life.

Husks…

How long before they smelled what lived inside? How long before they brought a contingent of Reapers down upon them? They had very little time, indeed.

And yet, Jack didn't want to move. Her pulse beat like thunder in her chest, raced up her neck along the jugular and hammered at her temples. It begged her to run. Death was right outside. No, not death. Those who would subjugate, alter, mutilate. Jack didn't fear death as much as she feared losing herself. She'd fought too hard to become the badass bitch she was today to let the Reapers turn her into mush…or worse yet, a husk. Cerberus would have wanted something just as demented out of her, but she had fought that too. So, why wasn't she moving, helping Pebbles get this show on the road?

Jack looked down at Rodriguez's peaceful face—an involuntary peacefulness, but at least she was still alive—and knew the answer to her question. As soon as they were ready to go—and that would be soon, judging by the presence building up outside—she would have to leave Rodriguez behind. It wasn't the thought of doing it that killed her. Jack knew she could do it. Duty, Shepard and the end of this war demanded it. The guilt if anything happened to the girl after she'd gone is what would do Jack in as surely as a bullet between the eyes.

Sitting cross-legged before her, Jack rested her forehead upon the girl's clammy brow. The tips of her fingers played lightly along Rodriguez's neck, feeling for a strong and steady pulse, but finding only a struggling, rhythmless thrum. Here in these hushed confines, Jack's mouth moved without words, begging that which she did not believe in for mercy. In her mind was an image of a rusted iron wall. On this wall were etched marks made with the blade of an imaginary knife. Here, Jack had a mark for every life she had ever taken, intentionally and unintentionally. She knew the exact number; didn't differentiate her counts between the accidents and the on-purposes. She had killed them all, but this number she would never speak aloud. Not to anyone. Not even to Shepard. So, Jack didn't beg for herself. She deserved no clemency, no pity. Jack was a killer, cold-hearted and ruthless. She begged for Rodriguez. She was the one who deserved the chance to continue, to keep fighting. If Jack could give her life to ensure it, she would. That truth would not let Jack root herself here at the girl's side when it was time to move.

A raspy voice spoke at her side. "I doubt it will be much consolation, but she will not be alone."

Jack raised her eyes to the colonel, whose right hand still grasped Rodriguez's left. "And what good will you do when the husks get in here?"

"Give my life to protect hers as she has to protect mine. She didn't have to, you know. I told her to leave me…but…" His words were reluctant, despondent. "…she wouldn't hear it."

As much as the girl fretted about her place in this war, and doubted her abilities, Rodriguez was above all selfless. Jack never doubted her stoutness of heart. Even when Cerberus attacked Grissom Academy, Rodriguez didn't falter to put herself in harm's way to protect her classmates. She never saw it that way herself, though. Rodriguez was too panicky to see anything but her own faults. But Jack knew. The girl was capable of greatness. It's why she brought her along on this mission instead of another of their mates.

Jack sighed and sat up. "She survived a batarian slaver attack when she was a kid."

"Did she?"

"Lost her whole family," Jack answered with irreverently raised eyebrows. "Grew up in an orphanage on a backward planet full of backward people who shit on her her whole life. Never got bitter. Never hated those who hated her. Never sought revenge…not like me." Jack stared down into her face and smoothed the bangs from her brow. "I never got how she did it. The universe turned against her. How could she not hate?"

"Because she knew love."

On the opposite side of the room, Prangley sat with elbows propped upon his knees. It was he who had spoken. He looked as drawn as Jack.

He shrugged when Jack looked questioningly back at him. "I asked her once. That's what she told me. I always thought Luce was meant for better stuff than this shit."

"And perhaps she is," the colonel said, squeezing Rodriguez's hand. "She's not dead. Not by a long shot. Don't give up on her."

Jack wouldn't, but she was on the verge of giving up on herself. Prangley's words had resonated with her. Stung her was more like it. Not the part about Rodriguez being meant for better endeavors in this war-torn galaxy they lived in. This was a fact Jack had already come to terms with. She felt no guilt in having brought Rodriguez into this war. Hundreds would have died without her efforts. No, it was the thought that having experienced love could temper one's hatred. What did that mean for herself? If she had ever known the sort of love Rodriguez spoke to Prangley of, it was lost to an infant's memory that she would never get back, torn from a mother by the greedy hands of the Illusive Man and Cerberus. From the moment Jack had been taken from a woman she could not remember, she had known only suffering and hate.

Love lived in her heart…somewhere. It was a tiny pocket of red glowing in an otherwise dark spirit. She was capable of showing it, diaphanously, like finely spun webs. It's what let her lean down and kiss Rodriguez's brow as Zaeed appeared out of the dark and motioned her forward. What Jack had missed in her life what the chance to experience what the girl had—to _be loved_.

Jack moved to rise, halting when Hicox said her name.

"Jack…I promise you, even if it means my life, I won't let anything happen to her."

She looked at him, but said nothing. The thought surfaced to give him her famous Subject Zero negativity, to fling words and expletives at him like monkeys flung shit in a zoo. In the end, she gave him a nod. She believed him. She had to, or else she had no hope. It was either that or imagine a wounded and broken man shredded by husks trying to save the life of a dying woman. Jack chose to have hope, shaky though it may be.

Without giving the colonel another look, Jack followed Zaeed into the darkness of the cathedral, keeping her footsteps as light as possible.

"What's up?" Jack felt a twinge of disgust in herself. She'd gotten damn good over the years hiding what was killing her inside.

"We're about to move out," he said in a grumbled whisper. "Grunt and the major are setting the third artifact in the bell tower." Zaeed grinned. "Or, I should I say the major is. That overgrown turtle refuses to climb up there."

Jack painted a pretty smile. She had no worries, right? "Chickenshit," she said with a shake of her head. "Then, where are we going?"

Zaeed had led her back to the makeshift comm room where Jack had found Grunt and Pebbles earlier. "The Chapel of Sacred Communication. Someone wants to talk to you."

"Who?"

"Guess." Another grin transformed his scarred face. He patted her arm and disappeared back into the dark.

Jack was alone in the comm room. It was dark, save for a dim lantern light that wouldn't reach the outside windows and one blinking red light on the communications console. All at once, Jack found she couldn't breathe. She knew without having to guess who was waiting on the other side. She hadn't seen her since shore leave. The entire time since, Jack had envisioned her dead or worse, husklike, zapped into oblivion by Reapers. She couldn't leave it to expectation. She had to know, had to see her, had to know that there was still somebody in this world she cared about that wasn't hurt or dying.

Two quick steps forward, Jack pressed the button on the comm. The blinking red light went away and the room turned into a shimmer of swimming blue light. The image of a body appeared, statically wavering and contorting. It wouldn't coalesce. Jack thought she heard a familiar voice, but it was struggling to get through. Shit, she was about to lose her!

"Shepard," she called through the fog, tweaking the connection for better reception. _"Shepard, is that you?"_

Jack knew how she sounded—like a little kid lost, desperate for mommy to make it all better—but she couldn't help herself. Her whole life had been about going to hell, surviving, escaping, and going back again. Even now, she found herself in a different hell, that of the Reapers' making. But inside, she was still the frightened little girl terrified of the bad men come to strap her in a chair and hurt her. That frightened little girl surfaced from time to time. Jack hadn't seen her in a long time. She had thought she'd banished her after the fight on the Collector ship. Seems she'd stuck around for just the right moment, when Jack felt at her wit's end. She was close to losing it. She'd kept it together for Prangley's sake. Seeing Shepard coalesce before her, looking just as she had always remembered her, brought it all back. Tears stung Jack's eyes. Her breath begged to hitch in her throat, and it felt like Grunt had just taken a seat on her chest.

"Jack, how are you guys?"

And there she was, clear as a bell. Maybe a little on the fuzzy blue side, but it was Shepard, bright eyes full of concern for her kids. Jack had an inkling that was how Shepard saw all the new recruits from the second crew. A bunch of rowdy kids intent on making a mess of the Normandy, left behind in the care of Papa Garrus when Mamma was away from the ship. Damn, if that didn't make her more emotional! If she weren't careful, she'd start crying like a baby!

Jack reeled it in, sucked it down and swallowed it. She had to be strong. They were in the middle of a war. Now was not the time for fear or tears. This was a mission briefing.

"Good, so far," Jack said. "We're a ways south of your position."

She'd stowed the emotion for now, but it clung to the timbre of her voice. She hated the trembling sound of it. At least there was more truth to it than her words. They weren't "good" and Shepard knew it. What she knew of their situation, Jack couldn't say, but Shepard certainly knew of their role in Hammer's mission. She wanted to tell her of Rodriguez. She wanted to tell her of those she'd failed to protect, if only to hear Shepard's consolation and approval. Instead, Jack kept her words light and covert in the case of listening ears.

"We saved some resistance fighters with barrier support. Bringing a bit more fire power your way." Which, when translated, said, _We saved the Enthrallment teams' asses, Shepard, so we can back you and Hammer all the way to end, whatever that may be._

And Shepard heard it, acknowledging it with a nod. "I'll see you on the other side."

Shepard always seemed to have a way of communicating everything she wanted to say in as little words as possible. She'd only spoken seven words, but every hidden meaning slammed Jack in the chest with as much force as a biotic punch. They radiated from her eyes as clearly as one might see through glass. In essence, those seven words said, _There's a good chance that neither of us will make it out of this, Jack, but if this is the last time we ever see each other, know what you mean to me. No matter what happens today, I will always be there for you._

And Jack thought seeing Rodriguez fighting for her life was the hardest thing she'd ever experience. How's that for a kick in the ass? Her breath came in shallow and heavy. The stinging in her eyes returned. The seconds were winding down. In a few moments, this conversation would be just a memory and Jack might never see her again.

Jack took another shallow breath and held it. "I won't let you down, Shepard."

"I know you won't, Jack."

Shepard broke eye contact the way one might rip a needle from their arm—hard and painful. She was about to go, to break communication. Jack couldn't bare it. She didn't want this to be only a memory she might ponder over one day in the blackness of space.

"Shepard," she called, drawing those motherly eyes back to her. What should she say? What said _I love you_ in the only way Subject Zero, the Psychotic Biotic…Jack…could say it?

"Go kick some ass."

Shepard smiled. She got it. "You, too."

The light faded. Shepard's form sheared and evaporated. The comm room went dark again. Jack closed her eyes, balled her fists. Despair wanted into her heart. She could almost feel it digging, biting, clawing, but Jack held it back, jabbed at its eyes, boxed its ears. She wasn't about to let the son of a bitch in. Not now. She had just come to a realization—she may have had a normal life stolen from her, she may have known nothing but pain and hate for the majority of the life she did have, and she may never know the love of her birth mother or father, but even if today was the last day she drew breath, she knew one thing for certain. She was loved, and no amount of pain or hate could take that from her.

Jack marched out of the comm room with a renewed sense of purpose. It was time to go to war.

* * *

 **Well, what did you think? Did you see Jack's comm chat with Shepard at end game the way I did? I always felt she sound like a lost little kid.**


	15. Control Of nONE

**Time for more Aria. This is another one of those chapters that has become one of my favorites. I might have taken some slight liberties with the use of biotics, so if you're a technical geek and you want to point out some inaccuracies, please let me know what you think in a review. I welcome the feedback.**

* * *

 _ **MASS EFFECT: ONE**_

* * *

 _"No man is free who cannot control himself."_

~Pythagoras~

 **Control Of nONE**

* * *

 **Somewhere on the Citadel – Before Endgame**

 ** _C_** _ontrol. It's all about control._

 _It's not about life or death or war, or even winning the war. Those things are only a part of what it means to have control. Without Control, life would mean nothing, death would mean nothing. And this war? This war would come under Reaper control. To hear some, the war is heading in that direction as I speak; that eventually, as system after system falls, the Reapers will have complete control over the life and death of everyone in the galaxy._

 _Not if I have anything to say about it._

 _Years of strategizing. Plans set into motion. Hiring, terminating, experimenting with operatives. Experimenting on_ myself. _Sacrificing the lives of the weak for the sake of humanity's progress._

 _In just a little while, it will all have been worth it._

 _Like the pieces on a chess board, the players in this war of Control are moving. The Queen, the most powerful of all pieces, has jumped from system to system, conquering and destroying, sending out her Knights and her Bishops to help ensure her conquest. Nevertheless, she has not dismissed the King. She knows he is out there, and she knows how important he is. Throughout the war, he has been weak. His legions have fallen by the millions. But the time is coming, and it is very soon now, when the King's weakness will be his strength. He will gather the remaining ones of his people—_ his _Bishops, Knights, and Pawns—and he will bring them to bear against the Queen. He will feel emboldened by the weapon he brings into play. A weapon with a name one will never find in the game of chess—The Crucible. It is a vessel that is designed to resist great heat, like a smelting pot where hardened metals are reduced to molten liquid. But it is more than that. It is the final test, a trial, if you will._

 _Is humanity ready for the change, for what is to come next? Is humanity ready to reveal what they are truly capable of? Because that is what the Crucible will reveal. I have seen it._

 _In the midst of all these are the Pawns. They are the most numerous, but they are also the weakest of the pieces. Represented in the game as either infantry or peasants, they are the ones who are sacrificed for the larger purpose. It has been their lot to play specimen and test subject in this war. The Queen has decimated and absorbed them for her own greater purpose. The King has sacrificed them to save the many. And I have taken the best of both of them. I have learned their weaknesses and their strengths. The sacrifices, the experiments upon the unwary, upon both the Queen and the King's Pawns, have all been to suit_ my _greater purpose._

 _But, there is one other piece. One more on the board that moves with relative impunity. The Rook. This piece is stronger than a Bishop or a Knight, with more power, more weight, more pull than either of them combined. With stealth, the Rook moves and dominates, taking from its opponents and using whatever it can to accomplish what it must. And what is more powerful than a Rook? Not the Queen, and certainly not the King, but_ two _Rooks._ I _am a Rook, and Shepard is the other. I know that when the pieces collide, she will join me in the power struggle, for two Rooks are infinitely more powerful than a Queen, especially at endgame. Then, and only then, will I have what the Reapers desire—Control._

 _I have only to wait._

 _I wait upon the Queen to move in for the death blow. I wait for the King and its Crucible. I wait for the other Rook to make its move, and in the final confrontation, I will show her just how powerful I have become. Control will be mine._

 _But, in the interim, I await the approach of a Knight. Not my Knight, Kai Leng. He is dead. That is understandable, and somewhat expected, considering the Knight will always stay close to where the action is. The Knight is involved, powerful in closed positions, capturing its enemies by replacing them. Aria T'Loak is just such a player, more so than Kai Leng, always moving to intercept, take over, but sheltered, surrounded by Pawns, exerting her strength remotely. But there is one fact that will remain true, whether in game or in life—Kai Leng discovered this when he fought Shepard—the Knight is never more powerful than the Rook, and could never win against one._

An omni-tool pinged. The Illusive Man stared at his and read the message displayed upon it: "They are coming."

 _Come, Aria. Let's bring an end to our differences the only way people such as us can._

 **EEE**

 _ **H**_ ard to decide which was worse—crawling on hands and knees, or walking hunched over and uncomfortable beneath a low ceiling.

Of course, there were worse situations to find oneself, like being one of the thousands who lay like objects on the ground, the life that once used to inhabit their physical forms now spirited away, sometimes mercifully, sometimes violently. The body becomes an empty shell. It matters not if it rots and putrefies on the surface of the Citadel, into the ground, under the ground or even if it tumbles about in space, a chunk of ice to float forever alone in the cold blackness. What remains is merely a shell, a thing. It doesn't care what happens to it. It wouldn't utter a single word of complaint if you tossed it down the garbage shoot. The core of what made the person—the personality, the facial expressions, the voice, the memories, the way he or she moved—that's all gone.

Aria had watched a person become a thing more times than she cared to count. Like Liselle—the eyes of her daughter (or the thing that used to be her daughter) staring back at her and yet staring at nothing, staring at a hole in the fabric of sentience—dead, empty, a shell, a thing, inanimate. The memory stood out like a spire above them all.

Aria, however, was not dead. Not yet. She had thoughts and plans she intended to see through to the end. One of the many was getting back to Omega in one piece. There was no better, no more fortified place in the galaxy. The Council knew this. (It's why they wanted so badly for Aria to take them there. So badly, they thought they could lock her up until she came to her senses. Bad move.) But the Council wasn't the only one who knew. There was one other. He hadn't tried to take Omega from her just for the sake of greed. He never did anything without a really good reason.

If any place, other than the Citadel, survived this war, it would be Omega. The asteroid itself had been around in the time of the protheans. It was impenetrable then, and made even more so over the years as it became a valuable station for the worst of the galaxy, violently changing hands again and again, but in this cycle, it was Aria T'Loak and her tight-fisted grip that made it impregnable. Having the Omega 4 Relay within her reach only strengthened her position.

But not if she wasn't there. The point now was to get off this doomed station and get back to her own. There was nothing left here, nothing but empty shells and those who would soon become empty shells.

Thus, she continued to move despite the cramped tunnel, despite the dull ache in her lower back and the burning in her thighs. They moved with swiftness through tunnels that became dirty with debris, that began to stink with something worse than stale air, barely talking amongst each other, following Kelham through tunnel after tunnel, climbing ever upward, trusting that he was leading them to her ship and not in the wrong direction. If she didn't trust Bailey's judgment implicitly, she would have much preferred it if Bray had done as he'd promised and decorated the walls with the man's innards. The drell would have made for a much more trustworthy guide. Drell, despite their well-known tendencies for self-destruction and an innate aptitude for being assassins, were an honorable species. Humans not so.

"How much farther, Kelham?" Bailey asked. He was ahead of her with Kelham, leading the way. Bray brought up the rear, watching their backs.

"We're close."

The man's gravelly voice didn't sound particularly promising. In fact, he sounded afraid. Aria wasn't the only one to pick up on it.

"Don't piss your pants, Kelham," Bray said with a gruff laugh. "Husks work fast. You'll only scream for a few minutes."

"Shut the hell up, you ugly batarian," Kelham shot back.

"Shut up both of you," Aria hissed. "Are you trying to get us killed? It's called a surprise attack for a reason."

Kelham came to a stop, resting on his haunches. He pointed. "You see that light in the distance?"

The three of them squinted, staring off in the only direction other than behind, though they didn't really need to. With the naked eye, far head, they could in fact see a shimmer of light. From this distance, it looked no bigger than a pin-point, a refraction from somewhere above, hitting the metal wall of the shaft.

"That's a T-junction," Kelham continued. "It leads right under one of the main hubs of the CTC."

"CTC?" Bray asked.

"Citadel Traffic Control," Bailey clarified and turned back to Kelham. "Go on."

"From here on out, we'll need to be especially careful. Last time I came out this way with Mouse, there weren't any of those things inside the hub, but they were all over the dock around the ship."

"Which ones?" Aria asked. "What are we up against?"

"Shit, I don't know what you call'em. Freaks. Monsters."

Bray gave a throaty exhale. "What did they look like, you soft-brained human?"

"Most of'em looked like you, four-eyed and ugly." He didn't have to explain further. They knew of which abomination he spoke, but Kelham continued anyway. He stared into his memory of the creatures, and nearly shook in his own skin. "They…their right arm…it was like the body of a human fused into the torso of a batarian. The legs were fused together and turned into some sort of weaponized appendage. But there was another kind there, too. Whatever it was, or whatever it used to be, it was big, armored, almost krogan-like, but bigger. You guys seen anything like that?"

The three of them shared a glance, but it was Bailey who spoke. "No. Husks mostly, a few of the batarian ones, this damned monstrous thing with wings, and a Reaper. Nothing like that."

"But I guess we're about to," Bray added. "What's the plan?"

The three of them looked to Aria.

"Keep moving," she said. "No point planning further when we don't know what to expect. We'll plan when we get there." She nodded Kelham forward, and though he sighed reluctantly, he put his tired legs into action and began leading them once again.

Just as promised, the tunnel ended in a T-junction. To the left, it continued into utter darkness, but to the right, a distorted shaft of light struck the wall ahead of them, refracting light in all directions. The light (artificial, by the look of it, and hung at such an odd angle as though someone had knocked a lamp askew) issued from a grate embedded into the ceiling of a tall, concaved section of the tunnel. Beneath it, and caught behind the shaft of light, were the rungs of a ladder. The objective was simple. None of them needed to discuss it. Only to act.

"Bray."

It was all Aria had to say. Bray nodded, moved past her into the shaft of light and beyond Kelham. The latter breathed a warning.

"Careful. The ladder's sticky."

Kelham wasn't joking. Inside the concave, and out of the blinding light, he couldn't miss the fine splatter of crimson that had dripped from above, from the top rung to the bottom one. The print of fingers and the smudge of boots from previous climbers marked the blood here and there, as would his. Bray climbed, but what would he find when he got up there? He turned one glance back to Kelham. The man's tight-lipped and grim expression gave away little more than he expected. If they found nothing at all, he was certain to find death. It's all they had encountered on every leg of this journey so far. Why would this one be any different?

He had begun to inspect the grate above him when a voice floated up, "Just give it a nudge." Bray did so and the grate came away easily, though not without sound. Breath held, Bray froze in place for several seconds. He waited for the grunt of a command, the shuffle of mutated feet, but none ever came. With a carefully controlled exhalation, he pulled the grate into the concave with him and handed it down to the three waiting below. Then he continued to climb, up and out, and came face to face a dead human.

It wasn't a surprise. He didn't hiss or moan at the sight. Something had drained its life blood through the grate and all over the rungs of the ladder below, so he expected it. What he didn't expect was the hole in the man's gut. A bullet wound to the head, maybe, but not this. The wound had gone clear through to his back, a bloody protrusions of vertebrate bones and intestines. What the hell could do something like that?

A tingling in his own spinal cord had him looking up and around. He didn't hear anything, not exactly. It was more like a feeling, like something was in the room with him.

Bray had come up in the center of the room, the air coming up from the vent shaft beneath him like a cold spot in a lake. To his left, an elevated platform, a set of stairs and an automatic door to the docks. All around him were monitors showing nothing but static; the illuminated workstations beneath them left empty in a hurry. Spilled cups of liquid. Half-eaten sandwich. He wondered if the sandwich had been for the dead guy, but he wasn't about to look back and see if any of it protruded from the man's back.

Brandishing his assault rifle, Bray moved cautiously away from the mangled body. Ahead, a rounded station, above which was suspended three large monitors. Stationary chairs were frozen in awkward positions as though someone had pivoted it to step away from and accidentally ripped the bolts from the floor. One had fallen over. Beyond the station, a bank of windows looking out onto the dock. Outside, what should have been the mists of the Serpent Nebula cascading over the dock like clouds over a cliff face, but instead were the streak of passing stars. He might have seen more but for the work station blocking his view. He was still huddled out of sight on his haunches, as though he hadn't left the air shaft. The creeping sensation of being watched would not leave him. Though, other than the dead guy with his intestines coming out of his back, and his mates waiting for him below, Bray was alone.

Inching toward the station ahead, Bray rested one hand upon the console and slowly, carefully pulled himself up to peer over the edge with his top two set of eyes. They weren't his best set, but they were good enough. What he saw only strengthened his suspicions.

 **EEE**

 _ **A**_ ria had watched Bray disappear over the lip of the opening some moments ago. The three of them had waited quietly at first, but nervous impatience was beginning to show in their expressions and in the agitated movement of their limbs. Bailey had begun bobbing his heel to some unheard beat, and Kelham's fingers were flexing in and out, in and out. Impatience wasn't the only thing coating the two men beside her in a fine sheen of sweat. She felt it too, though, she exhibited none of the outwards signs (besides, she couldn't sweat even if she wanted to). Apprehension. It came off each of them in waves, but especially Bailey and Kelham. Humans and their body odor. The stench had begun to nauseate her as the seconds lengthened into minutes. She might have stooped to prayer if it would have expedited Bray's return (if only to get away from these two), but luck and her batarian merc saved her in the end. Bray's head poked down from the grate and he waved them up.

Aria was the first one up, eager to breath the fresh air, when her eyes came upon the body. Just as Bray, she expected the sight of death, but not its manner. She grimaced as she climbed out of the air shaft.

"Stay down," Bray warned.

Bailey and Kelham followed behind her, each with their own reaction to the body. Bailey grimaced as she had, but Kelham turned away. He didn't look. He'd already had a good look once before.

There weren't too many people who could read fear in a batarian's eyes, other than another batarian, but Aria could. It glimmered within Bray's black pools like flecks of ice over water.

"What is it?" Aria asked.

He lifted his chin toward the body. "Something doesn't feel right."

"What are you—nuts?" said the bitter voice of Kelham. "Nothing feels right about anything. This guy was dead when Mouse and I came up here, and he was dead with Kolyat came."

"No," Bray said. "Not just him." This time he jerked his head to the left. "Look out the window."

The three of them began to move toward the same station he had only moments before.

"But do it careful-like."

Aria turned back. "Why? What are you sensing, Bray?"

"Just go look."

"We don't have time for theatrics," Bailey mumbled under his breath, but he did as Bray asked. All three of them did. Like a reflection of the past, the scene replayed. The three of them saw what Bray had seen, and they moved as he had moved, each carefully pulling themselves up so that just the top of their heads and their eyes might be viewable from the other side of the station. The only distinction, besides there being three sets of eyes instead of only one, were the expressions. Kelham's widened. Aria's brows came together and her eyelids drew to slits. Bailey's seemed to make no expression at all, but beneath the line of the workstation, his jaw dropped.

In the slip rested Aria's ship, a sleek and four-pointed cruiser, painted with straight-angled yellows lines across an otherwise grey-metal frame. The Elbrus, once Petrovsky's ship. Now, hers. It waited for her like a bastion of hope, ready to spirit them away back to Omega, where she belonged, and where she could make her last stand. Maybe they could even win this war.

All these thoughts came in seconds, as the mind is capable of thinking, but Aria's rational mind soon kicked in, and what it concluded wasn't quite so hopeful. Save for the Elbrus, the dock was empty. There was not a Reaper creature in sight. There was only the Elbrus, as well as a few human and turian bodies.

"What the hell?" Kelham said beside her. "Where'd they go? The place was swarming."

Aria turned away from the open window and met eyes with Bray. He was one of the keenest batarians she ever had working under her. When Bray said something wasn't right, she listened. She could lay bets on his suspicions and win every time.

Kelham, it would seem, didn't trust anyone's vision but his own. "Luck must be on our side. Come on." He got swiftly to his feet, but he was just as swiftly brought down again. Aria had him by the lapel and Bray by the arm. "What the hell? Get your alien hands off me!"

Aria's fingers moved from his lapel to his jaw and clenched. "Keep your trap shut and do not move unless I tell you to." She didn't let go until he consented with a nod. While Kelham rubbed his jaw, doing his best to keep the curse trembling at the end of his tongue in place, Aria continued. "Bray's right. Something is wrong. This stinks worse than the sweat seeping out of your pores." She wiped said sweat onto the front of his shirt.

"What?" Kelham said. "All the monsters are gone and that makes the two of you nervous? We've got a clear path to the ship. Why don't we take it?"

"Because I know a ambush when I smell one," Bray said.

Kelham's face twisted in disgust. "Ambush?"

"Shut up, Kelham." This came from Bailey. He had been listening to every word, but that shocked look had not yet left his face. "You're not only an idiot, you're unobservant. Bray _is_ right, but that's not our only problem. Have _any of you_ noticed the other rather more distressing fact?"

Aria gave him a withering gaze. "Evidently not, so why don't you tell us."

He pointed to the bank of windows. "The arms of the Citadel are beginning to close."

" _What?"_

If Bailey had told her that he himself had been the one to punch a hole through the dead guy on the floor simply because he was hungry, she would have not been more horrified than she was now. The arms closing? Their way of escape cut off? Trapped on the Citadel with death all about them, Omega hundreds of millions of miles away from her? No, that could not be happening. It was impossible. She had planned for every eventuality. They would get off this doomed station no matter what.

Aria jolted to her feet in much the same manner as had Kelham, but this time no one moved to stop her. She had to see for herself that what Bailey claimed was true, and indeed it was. Arms that had once been open, ready to greet all that came to its welcoming haven, were now closing; not rapidly, as though one could stand and watch, but incrementally as they neared the Reapers' destination. The where was not nearly as important as the when. Time had run short. Soon it would be gone. Aria saw no other choice.

"We move now." Bringing her shotgun to bear, she moved for the door, taking the brief set of steps in one leap. Kelham was at her heel, as eager as she to be off the station, but Bray, and even Bailey hung back.

"Aria!" Bray called. "Wait!"

"No."

Aria reached for the button which would open the door, but never touched it. A hand, brown and mottled with the color of batarian skin, enveloped her wrist in a viselike grip. In seconds he had crossed the distance between them, knocked Kelham out of his way, and had stopped her before she could press the button that would lead them out of the traffic control hub.

Bray's face was inches from hers when he spoke. "We'll be walking right into a trap and you know it."

Pulling her wrist from his grip, she reared back her fist to strike, but something inside said stop. She listened. Dammit! She listened to that inner voice. It was a voice of reason and sensibility. The voice of Tevos. The voice of Shepard. She hated their echo in her head! But as much as she hated it, she also heard her own voice, deep and resonant, behind theirs. And it was in agreement. This was Bray, her second and her most loyal, and damn it all, he was right.

Aria lowered her raised fist. She wouldn't strike, but she did grip the lip of armor around Bray's neck and brought him close. "Yes we are," she said, her blue irises two rock solid circles of truth and conviction. She half-turned to Bailey. "But as unobservant as I might be, I noticed what the two of you did not. Look out there. The station is slowing down."

Now at his full height, Bailey looked out the bank of windows and saw what Aria had seen. The movement of stars through the windows of a cruiser were not as familiar to him as they would be to someone like Aria, who had spent most of her life among them. The way they had seemed to streak across the galaxy, stretched out and pulled apart, as if the stars and not the station were moving, had lessened.

Bailey blanched. He leaned against the workstation, using it to support his weakened knees. "Aria's right. We're slowing."

Aria continued. "And who knows how long it will be before we come to a complete stop, but I can promise you, when we do, the arms will close, and this is where we will die. I don't know about the rest of you, but I for one am not dying on this shit hole of a station. I _will_ return to Omega and dare the Reapers to try and take it from me."

A crackle of static. A pitched whine. Every screen in the room seemed to flash with color and light, brightening the hub for a millisecond as might a flash of lightning. Then laughter, harsh and caustic, echoed from an overhead speaker.

"I'd like to see you try," said the voice that followed.

For one maddening second, Aria thought it was Bailey on a microphone. Similar scratchy voice, same haughty laughter. He'd suddenly lost his mind in the realization that they might not make it off this station alive and decided to crack wise, turning her affirmation into a joke. But as lightning fast as the vid screens had flashed, each one of them now displayed an image, a face.

This face, twisted by need and tortured with twining black-blue scars that seemed to crawl from his neck up to his face, was not one Aria recognized. But the voice, and the need, the need for control, _that_ she recognized.

The Illusive Man. She had only ever spoken to him once. He had convinced her that his men, Petrovsky and Ashe, had only come to Omega to help. His words then had been lies, as they surely would be now. But that did not answer the most important question.

What the hell was he doing on the Citadel?

"Don't bother," he said before she had a chance to ask. "I'm not here to answer your questions, Aria. I have much grander plans in mind, and those plans do not include you making it off the Citadel alive. Not you, not anyone with you, and certainly not the Council."

"No!" cried a voice, but it was not Aria's. Standing beside her was Kelham, his face white, his finger pointing accusingly at the monitor. "No, you promised! You promised you would get me out of here!"

The twisted, yet amused face of the Illusive Man blanked when he considered Kelham. "I promised you only what you were willing to believe. You're usefulness is complete."

A hiss of sound behind them signaled the opening of the control room's door. Aria turned, expecting Kelham had jabbed the 'open' button in an effort to run, but nothing of that sort had happened. It had opened of its own accord, without warning, the truth written in the expression on Kelham's face and in the sight of what waited for them beyond.

What she saw shattered what little remained of her hope of winning. It used to be asari, perhaps once a maiden dancing her way up the ladder as she once had, perhaps a matron counting down the days of her life through the eyes of her daughters and the might of her wisdom. Now, there was just a monster. Eyes black as the depths of hell, features perverted by an invading Reaper virus. This is what awaited her. This was the future of her people, and she among them, one among many, enslaved, the person one had spent hundreds of years developing into a cohesive being gone in the blink of an eye.

And that was how time passed in the following seconds—so fast and yet so slow that Aria never had time to blink before it was over. The Illusive Man issued his threat, the door opened, Kelham's face contorted in horror, but he never screamed. He wasn't given the chance.

The thing that had once been asari reached for him, lightning fast, gripped the back of Kelham's head in one taloned, elongated hand and pulled him from the ground to its malformed height. Kelham's forehead met its gaping, screaming maw (banshee; Verner had called it "banshee"). There was an audible crunch that Aria would remember until the end of her days, and then the banshee's other taloned hand shot through Kelham's midsection. Bone, blood and tissue shot from his back as though a charge had been exploded within him. It happened in seconds. Kelham never uttered a grunt of pain or fear. One second, alive. The next, dead.

What happened next—the heel of Bray's palm planting firmly into her chest, the feeling of going backward, her lower back crashing into the guardrail, flipping up and over, the scream of the banshee, the explosive echo of an assault rifle, and landing in a heap on the other side—happened just as fast. She didn't question Bray. She knew she could have gotten to her feet, met the same monstrosity with her own weapons and helped him out, but she knew why he pushed her. His actions told her 'Get back to Omega.'

Bailey was at her side in the next second, helping her to her feet. There was no other way out of the control hub but through glass. Neither one asked or looked at the other. There was no question. They shot the glass, shattered it and ran through it, letting their shoulders take the brunt of the blow, but the glass gave way easily, shattering over them like a rain of ice.

"Run, Aria," came a voice from behind, but this one was taunting, hateful. "You won't get anywhere."

Aria looked up from her place on the ground. She was on the dock, bleeding from a million little cuts, but there was the Elbrus, gleaming and ready for takeoff just meters away. She scrambled to her feet, grinning with a ferocity only a predator could appreciate. She would make the docking ramp in seconds, and when she strapped herself into the Elbrus, she would make the Illusive Man eat his words along with a spoonful of bullets.

But a cry, deep and guttural, drew her attention. She chanced to look back, only to see Bray caught in the grip of the banshee.

"Go!" Bailey, cut and beaten as herself, pushed her forward…and then did something she would never forget. He ran back to help Bray, leaving her to make a choice. Bailey and Bray, or Omega? In the final seconds, as her singular vision shifted back to the Elbrus, Aria made her choice, but in her hesitancy, she also made a mistake. She underestimated the Illusive Man.

She was seconds away from the ramp when every muscle in her body seized and became as rigid as rock. Her will to keep moving fought against it, but though she struggled, Aria could not move. From within her issued a scream of rage so pure it might have killed anyone nearby were it given power.

"You see, Aria," echoed the voice of the Illusive Man, "you will never win. Not against me."

His voice had not come from within the hub. He was near, a specter floating upon the air, not close enough to strike with anything but words. Hollow, metallic footfalls descending the ramp were what finally drew her eyes to him, for that was all she could move. The bastard was in her ship! All along, he had been in her ship! At last, face to face with the man at the very top of her shit list and here she was, frozen like the statue of runner. One foot in front the other, arms bent and swayed apart from each other, in the act of sprinting away from the two people who had now saved her life more times than she could count. She was their final reckoning, and the Illusive Man was the witness to her selfishness and greed.

He walked up to her, amused at her rage, at the promise of death he saw in her eyes. "That's right. The time of Aria T'Loak, and all those like her, is up. While the Reapers play their game with the galaxy, I am carving humanity's future. This is _my_ time, and you will not be a part of it. Look here, Aria."

Heavy, pounding footfalls came from somewhere behind her. The cold-blooded screech of the banshee filled her ears, reverberated in every bone in her body until it came into her peripheral vision carrying Bray's struggling form. One hand gripped him by the head, the other by the torso. It was crushing him, little by little. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, from his nostrils, from his ears. Controlled by the Illusive Man, it would kill Bray just as it had killed Kelham, this time for her benefit.

The Illusive Man walked passed her, raising a hand to the sight of the banshee before them. "As I control you now, I can control these Reaper constructs, and soon I will control the Reapers themselves. The end of this war is very near now, and when it is _I_ will control the Citadel, and _I_ will control Omega as I should have from the start."

"I am going to tear you apart with my bare hands!" Aria howled, bristling against her invisible constraints. "You'll be begging for your life like your dog Petrovsky."

The Illusive Man laughed. "Petrovsky was a weak link. All of them were. Even Kai Leng. There is only me now…and one other, but she's not here yet." He suddenly appeared beside her, his warped face blocking her view of anything except the virus that was slowly overtaking him. Soon, he would be just another mindless husk and he didn't even know it. "You're weak, Aria. Finished. You can't even tear apart the air in front of you to get to me."

"Don't…listen to him, Aria," Bray said, hitching in a painful breath. "Tell that son of a whore whose side he's really on." The Illusive Man turned menacing eyes toward Bray and the banshee's hand squeezed over his torso. He cried aloud, but he refused to give in. "Show him…who…controls Omega!"

Even as the banshee squeezed and Bray growled out his agony in a groaning cry, his eyes never strayed from hers. There were some resources even the Illusive Man had no control over, and one of them was her connection to Bray, their shared knowledge. She hadn't needed Bray simply for his knowledge of the ship. She could have piloted it and defended herself at the same time. It would have been much more difficult, but she could have done it.

Now, as she stood frozen here, forced to look out over the length of the Citadel, and past the lost hope of the Elbrus, Aria knew what she had to do. The Citadel had begun to slow exponentially. Its arms had begun to contract. This was truly the end. All hope of escaping the trap of death…gone. The Council…Tevos…would now have to figure out how to save itself, for Aria knew of a way to bring this to a quick end, one that didn't involve fighting to her last breath, hoping she wouldn't be transformed into a Reaper abomination. It involved sacrifice—a word which Aria was not completely comfortable with, but which she was not afraid of meeting face to face if it meant taking out the Illusive Man, proving him wrong and proving who really did control Omega—sacrifice of Bray, of Bailey, of herself, of the whole damn Citadel if she had to, but not of Omega. She had a contingency plan in place if sacrifice of herself were necessary, and it seemed now was that time.

Bray's eyes said, "do it," and his lips moved to say it without sound. He was nearly done for. She had to act. The Illusive Man might be able to control her body, to freeze her in place with little more than a flick of his mental wrist, but he could not control her mind. Aria closed her eyes.

"What are you doing?"

Tendrils of biotic power left her. It snaked over the hull of the Elbrus, searching for entry. Once found, it moved along electrical systems, bounced off nodes, hitched rides upon circuits no human biotic could travel until it discovered the server. She and Bray had devised it together. No other man in her employ would do, not since the passing of Anto. An explosive device, activated by Aria biotically, but triggered by Bray remotely. The device he would have kept as part of his armor, but after his arrest she was sure he had secreted it away on his person.

" _Aria?!"_

She opened her eyes, connected with Bray. He was leaving her. She could see it in the slump of his head, but his eyes had not yet disconnected. He was looking at her, waiting for his signal. She gave it to him, and Bray pressed the button on the device in his hand. Seconds before the Elbrus exploded, Aria saw a ghost of a smile on his lips.

 **EEE**

 _ **W**_ ater lapped at her heels. Sand squished between her toes. A soft breeze played across her skin. To her left, children splashed in the water, laughing and playing.

 _Where am I?_

It wasn't Omega, it wasn't the Citadel either, but it was certainly a damn sight better than where she had been.

She wasn't the only one here on this lonely stretch of beach with its sand reeds swaying almost hypnotically in the breeze coming off the water. She saw people of all species here. Some splashing in the water, relaxing, holding hands and strolling along the beach, or standing in the dunes of sand behind her, sand reeds playing at their calves. A sense of calm, of peace that she hadn't experienced in many, many years flooded through her veins, like having had too many glasses of a good wine. Anyone else might have thought they found home, but to Aria, it didn't feel right. It felt like a really bad joke. She didn't know whether to get pissed or enjoy it.

She reached for the comforting feel of a pistol at her side. Nothing there but her hip. Aria frowned. She wore a silk gown, the soothing color of lilac. A part of her wanted to give in to the fantasy, to let go and go with it. She could walk over to the children and play with them, or make her way into the dunes, see what lay beyond, but another part whispered, "Stay, don't move, this will all be over soon."

Then, over the dunes came a familiar face. His eyes sought her out and when he found her, he smiled. "Bray?" she said as he made his way to her. Even her voice didn't sound right.

"Yeah, I know," he said, that ghost of a smile on his face. "Looks like a really hokey dream, but I'm going with it. Hope you don't mind."

"What?"

He shook his head. "You're confused. I was, too. It doesn't feel right at first, but you get used to it."

"Get used to what?"

He grinned and went on. "Here's the thing, though. You can't get used to it. You've got work to do."

"Work?" She almost didn't know what the word meant. Is this what he meant by getting used to it? "Bray, what the hell are you talking about?"

Her eyes slid over his shoulder toward the dunes. Something beyond them beckoned her. She wanted to see, to understand. She tried to step around him, but Bray held her by the shoulders.

"No," he said. "You've got to go back."

Some _one_ began to pull at her arm, to pull her away, and a familiar gravelly voice called, _"Aria!"_

She tried to step away from Bray. "I need to see what's over there."

He held her back. "There's nothing out there you won't get to see later. For now, you need to go back."

" _Aria,"_ the familiar voice called. _"Come back to me now."_

"I just need you to do me one favor before you go. Swear on your life that you'll protect my family."

The one pulling on her arm had become insistent. His grip was pulling her away from Bray, away from the sight of what beckoned her beyond the dunes, from what rose above them. A blue-skinned face with the tentacles of an asari, a face she had longed to see again, if only to tell her what she had always felt impossible to say— _I love you, my daughter_. But the hand pulled and Bray was fading. A fog had begun to take over the beach, rolling in from the water like an invading army. She watched him raise a hand in farewell. His voice was almost as lost in the fog as his physical form.

"And tell them I love them," she heard on the air as everything went white.

And then, as though someone had flipped a switch, her entire world went black and she couldn't breathe. Back into the water she went. Tethered and pulled down into its deepest depths. Water fought to rush in, and in classic Aria fashion, she fought back with everything she had. But if there was one force in the galaxy Aria T'Loak could not fight, it was the force of nature. Since the beginning of all that was, nature has always won out. No one as inconsequential and organic as she was could win against such a force.

The water rushed in, filling her lungs like a cavernous well, and like a thousand stabbing knives it pushed to every part of her body until she felt made of water, weak and liquefied, trembling as fish tremble out of water. Her heart pounded as waves on the seashore and her head felt like it was going to implode until the rush of water felt like the rush of air, the pounding waves felt like the pounding of fists on her chest, and the thousand stabbing knives felt like a slap to the face.

Aria took a gasping breath and opened her eyes. The world around her was instantly black and orange, filled with smoke and yet pouring rain. Gone was the ocean, the fog, gone was the beach, Bray and the sight of Liselle's beautiful face appearing over the sand dune. Aria was once again on the Citadel, and hovering above her was a human she had almost forgotten existed. Owen Bailey. He knelt over her, water pouring down from the top of his head as though he stood beneath a showerhead, his eyes wild with fear…that is until her eyes fixed upon his, and then that fear turned to exaltation.

"Thank God!" he cried. "You're alive! Are you alright, Aria? Can you hear me? Are you hurt?"

Aria coughed. Despite the sprinkler system soaking her to the bone, her lungs were desiccate after its trip toward the edge of death. "Wh—What—?"

"What happened?" Bailey finished for her, asking the question for himself, and helping her to sit up. "One minute I was frozen like a popsicle and the next the world exploded. You tell me what happened."

They were back inside the hub. How they got in there, Aria could only guess. But she wanted to know. _Had_ to know. She grabbed Bailey by the lapel with one weak hand. "Bray?"

The answer she already knew Bailey answered by looking away and lowering his head. "If the monster didn't kill him, the explosion surely did. What the hell happened to the Elbrus?"

"And the Illusive Man?"

"Is that who that was?" He sighed. "I looked. I only found you, Bray and the monster that killed him. Unless the man's in pieces somewhere, I didn't see him."

Hearing the news was like drowning all over again. Bray gone. The Illusive Man escaped. She hadn't come this far only to lose! "Son of a…" She didn't finish. Words meant nothing. She let the rage build within her, hoping it would give her strength to rip the room apart. This wasn't the way it was supposed to happen!

But anger didn't create strength. She was sapped, completely drained. There was nothing left in her but weak punches, and so she took them out on Bailey, pounding his chest armor with the strength she had left and bellowing until there was nothing left of her voice. Bailey didn't argue or try to stop her. He took it like penance, as though the whole affair was his fault. And maybe that's what he felt. Aria didn't know, and in that moment, she didn't she care. She only knew how hard Bray had fought to stay alive for his family. Now, he was dead. And that bastard, the Illusive Man, had gotten away after all. If Bailey hadn't found him, he was still out there somewhere. She just hoped, wherever he was, he was coughing up blood the same as she was coughing up death.

For a few moments, Aria couldn't move. She just sat there, propped up against the wall, leaning on Bailey as if he weren't another living, breathing lifeform. She might have even forgotten he was there if he hadn't spoken.

"Feel better?"

"No."

"We need to get the hell out of here, Aria."

"And go where?" She coughed. Was it death or was it smoke? "We're all dead now."

Bailey began to cough too. "We will be if we don't get moving. Can you stand?"

He pulled at her arm, but Aria refused to move. "What's the point?"

"The point is they're coming back," he whispered. "I can hear them. We need to get below."

"The arms are closed."

"Closing, _not_ closed."

"And the Elbrus is in pieces. We're not going anywhere."

"So what?" Bailey shook her. "We still have a chance of surviving this, goddamit!"

"We were never supposed to survive the explosion! That was the whole point, you ignorant ass! To kill the Illusive Man, Bray and I chose to kill us all."

Bailey sat back on his haunches. "You destroyed your own ship, destroyed your own way off this station. Why the hell would you do something so goddamn stupid?"

"Because we lost our window. Our chance to get off the station was gone. Triggering the destruction of the Elbrus sent a message to my people. Lock Omega down, seal it up, no one in or out except me, until the war is over."

Bailey was quiet for a moment as the water sprinklers did their job and soaked them from head to toe. Then he shook his head, anger tightening his lips into a thin line. "It's all about control with you, isn't it? You can't get back to Omega, so you do the only damn thing that will keep anyone from taking it from you, even if you're a dead woman. What about our lives?"

"We're already dead, Bailey. Don't you get that? We're never getting off this station. Not now."

"So! We can still get the Council to safety. We can still _do something_."

Aria turned blankly away from Bailey, her eyes focusing on nothing. Bailey felt a surge of anger in his breast. The bitch was giving up. Her entire struggle from the minute the Council had taken her into custody, had been to get back to Omega. Now that the option, and her closest associate was gone, she was giving up the fight.

"Bullshit!" Bailey grabbed her by the arm and yanked her to her feet so fast her head spun. He had no choice but to hold her up. "Were you dumb enough to think I was going to get off this station with you? Run to Omega with the Council like a coward? Hell no! I had every intention of seeing you and the Council off, but _I_ wasn't going anywhere. This is my home, damn you! As much as Omega is yours. I'm not about to let these bastards go on butchering my people." Hand on Aria's upper arms, Bailey shook her. "So, don't you dare shut down like nothing else matters. Aria T'Loak does not just give up, and I'm not going to let you!" His hand shot out across Aria's cheek with a resounding smack. He'd slapped her once before to keep her from dying. Now, he slapped her again to bring the woman he'd met in Purgatory back to life. "Not when the Illusive Man is still out there. _He's_ not giving up, Aria, so don't you give up now, not after all we've been through. Swear to me. Swear on your life!"

 _Swear on your life…_

It came back to her with the force of a crashing wave. The water, the sand, the beach, Bray, swearing to protect his family. Could she do that here, waiting for death to amble up to her and put a bullet in her brain, or to run an arm through her abdomen. Real or not, vision or not, dream or not, Aria had made a promise.

Focusing her vision on Bailey—the human who had been beside her through almost every step of hell, through prisons and adjutants, husks and Reapers, never once backing away in fear—Aria reared back and punched him dead in the face. Bailey stumbled back, hand to his jaw. He might nearly have fallen over had he not fetch up upon the workstation behind him. He looked at her, tested the blood on his lip with the tip of his finger, tasted the blood in his mouth with the tip of his tongue, and inexplicably began to laugh.

"You back yet?" he asked, a smile on his face.

Aria took two surefooted steps toward him. "Hit me again and I'll do worse than punch you." Angry though she might be, the smile on his face couldn't keep her angry for long. She felt a sort of kinship toward Bailey, made stronger by what they had faced together. She took his hand in an effort to steady him (she had knocked him a good one), but she had another reason.

"Okay," she said, shaking his hand. "Okay, Owen. Let's get the hell out of here, but we're not going below. We go up."

She pointed out of the shattered window, through the smoke and the falling water and destruction of the Elbrus, toward a service ladder bolted to the far wall. It led to a catwalk on an upper floor, which led to a doorway.

"Aria, can't you hear them? They're coming." In answer, the low moan of a husk filtered through the dark. There was some distance yet between them, but Bailey was right. They were coming.

"Then, we fight our way through if we have to, but that is where we are going, after _him._ "

"No, we have to get to the Council first. Forget about that Illusive Dickhead for now."

"Don't you get it? As long as he's alive, every member of the Council is already dead, and so are we. If he can do what he claims, he will ensure it. We have to stop him."

Bailey warred with the idea in his mind, running bruised and bloody hands through his short-cropped hair. Time was running short, and he knew this wasn't all about protecting the Council. This was also about revenge, Aria's revenge.

"Okay, fine," he finally said. "But we've gotta move now."

Bailey showed little consideration for any injuries she might have sustained in the explosion. He was gruff in helping her up and over the shattered remains of the window, right back out onto the dock where they had been. Bits of the Elbrus were everywhere, laying in standing water, still smoking. The bulk of the ship must have broken away from the dock and fallen, or was sucked into the Citadel's antigrav center between the arms. Strewn and burning hulks of machinery littered the floor at their feet. A wing had dug itself into the wall above. The two of them stepped through puddles, around mounds of debris, careful not the singe themselves in still burning flames, but moving quickly to avoid the coming assault. If they could make it above unseen, they might be okay. But as they neared their destination, Aria stopped and went to the floor on her knees with a grimace of pain.

Bailey checked behind them for any movement, but could see nothing through the smoke and the falling water. He knelt beside Aria. It was on his tongue to ask if she were all right when he saw what had drawn her here—Bray. He lay dead within the arms of the thing that had killed him. All four of his black eyes stared sightlessly, filling with pools of water. Blood trickled from every orifice in his skull, thinning out and washing away as water hit it. He had been crushed, by the creature and by flying debris. Bailey hadn't known him long, but he respected him more than any human he had ever met. The man went down fighting, loyal to the end.

Bailey reached to close his four eyes when Aria laid a hand upon his wrist. "No," she said softly. "Batarians believe the soul leaves the body through the eyes. Leave him."

A high keening sound reached their ears. "We need to move. We'll come back for him."

She could have added that it did matter. Batarian didn't care what happened to their bodies after death. The only offense would have been if someone were to remove the eyes as a specific act of disrespect. She'd had it done to some of them before. She didn't say any of this however.

"How? How did he die while I lived? I was closer. The explosion should have taken me."

"You shielded yourself. Don't you remember?"

Aria shook her head.

"A second before the blast, when that damned Illusive Man released us, I saw you. You must have done it instinctively. If he's powerful enough to do what he did to us, then he probably shielded himself same as you. Let's move, Aria. Come on."

Bailey got to his feet, but Aria didn't move as quickly. He watched her place an open palm upon the batarian's forehead and close her eyes. Her brow bunched together, and though she never shed a tear for Bray's loss, Bailey knew sorrow when he saw it.

"I swear," she said in a hoarse whisper. "I swear on my life." With a heavy sigh, Aria stood up, and Bailey could practically see her putting the sorrow away for another time and place. The essential Aria T'Loak was here now, and she was ready to get back to the business. "Let's go."

The sound of an approaching horde closing in, Aria took the rungs of the ladder at a run, ignoring the pain in her ribs and in every inch of her body. She made the catwalk in record time, despite her injuries, and risked one look back before slipping through the door. A horde it was, loaded with more Reaper monstrosities than she had ever wanted to see in her lifetime. Luck was on their side this time. They had not been spotted and the Illusive Man's trap had only taken two lives. Aria still had hers and she was going to use every ounce of it to rip him limb from limb. Control wouldn't be his for long.

Inside the corridor, Aria locked the door behind them, so no eager little husks could follow if they had been spotted. She took off at a sprint. They were on the Presidium now, nearly back to the place where all hell had broken loose hours ago. Aria could almost picture herself in Purgatory, listening to the thrum of music, but that was in another life. Too much had happened in between then and now for her to still be the same person who could sit back and let life move by around her as if it had little meaning outside of Omega space. It was this place, on the edge of death and the people she had surrounded herself with in the final hours that had changed her. Change was not something that came to Aria T'Loak easily. She fought it like one fought to stay alive, but here it was. Change was a part of her now and there was no looking back.

They reached a doorway. Bailey keyed his omni-tool and it opened at his command. Wherever they had found themselves, orange flashing lights were all that illuminated the darkness. Overhead lights were out. With his rifle, Bailey indicated the wall across from them where the orange light flashed. Painted upon it was a large and blocky letter "A" with a number beside it. A turian C-Sec officer lay propped against the wall beneath it, a bullet in his head.

"Docking Bay A12," he whispered, trying to ignore the sight of the officer. "We're a hop, skip and a jump from the Commons. How the hell do you even know which way the Illusive Man went?"

"Think about it," Aria said as she turned and faced the darkness of Bay A12. "The Illusive Man wants control of the Citadel. Where's the one place he'll go to get it?"

When it the truth of it hit him, Bailey felt like an idiot. "The Citadel Tower," he said with an unhappy smirk. "Just like Saren Arterius."

"Exactly, and that's where we're headed."

Just as she finished speaking, a swath of light pierced the darkness of the docking bay. It was coming from the bay windows. Aria's first thought was that it was ship, piercing the station with its light, looking for survivors. She ran toward it. A ship meant rescue, getting the council off the station, making contact with the outside world.

Aria skidded to a stop. It wasn't a ship. It was the station itself, moving, coming into position with an object that filled every bay window.

"Holy God," Bailey breathed beside her. "It's Earth."

"What?"

Bailey pointed out the window. "That's Earth. I'd know the sight of Africa anywhere. What the hell?"

The ground beneath them began to shudder as the image in the windows came to a standstill. As though something had pulled a rug out from under their feet, Aria and Bailey both went down, the ground jerking from beneath them. With one hand, Bailey gripped the handrail along the bay windows. With the other, he grabbed Aria and hung on for dear life as the station itself threatened to throw them across the room. Its centrifugal motion had come to a jarring end as it settled into a new gravity well.

The Citadel groaned and rumbled. Anything not bolted down, fell over or went flying. And then, like a dead calm, everything just stopped. Whatever was in the air, came to the ground with a crash, as did Bailey and Aria. They had time enough for a mere glimpse between the bars of the handrail at the destruction taking place on Earth below before the arms fully closed. Bailey's heart sink at the sight, both for his family and for himself. He could only imagine how terrified they must be…if they were even—

The thought never had time to manifest itself. As suddenly as they came to a stop, lights began to flicker and short out. There were mini explosions all about them, sparks flew, illuminating bodies on the floor of the docking bay. Mostly officers, a few civilians. They were plunged into an all-encompassing darkness, long enough to hear the collective screams of those still alive in other parts of the station. Then, one by one, the lights flickered back on here and there. Not all of them, but a good many. What light they lost from outside, they now gained from within. They could see again.

"What the hell just happened?"

"I don't know," Bailey answered, struggling to his feet, and helping Aria to do the same. "Ten to one, it wasn't anything good. Now what?"

Aria looked about at the exits around them—behind them, above in the vents and the one at the end of the corridor adjacent to the waiting area. "The Illusive Man was right. This is coming to an end…fast. Whatever just happened, I'm betting we don't have much time. How do we get to the Tower from here?"

"Remember what Mouse said: 'the Tower was overrun.' That means the Presidium probably is too." He pointed a vent above. "The least conspicuous way would be up."

Aria eyed the vent, but the idea of cramming herself into another air shaft was no more appealing than walking among husks, and Bailey could see it.

"Well, we can't walk out in the open on the Presidium. That would be suicide." Bailey snapped his fingers. "I know! There are service corridors that run the length of the Presidium. Might take a bit longer and there'll be obstacles in the form rooms and locked doorways, but we should get through relatively unscathed."

"It's the relatively that bothers me. What other options do we have?"

"None," Bailey said, heading for the door at the end of the corridor. "Let's move before we draw attention. We might luck out, find a working lift or a C-Sec post where we can reload."

"Definitely need to reload."

Bailey tapped his omni-tool and the door quietly slid aside. He went to step over the threshold when Aria's hand landed on his shoulder. "Owen," she said, her voice as contrite as he had ever heard it, and her eyes sought out every other sight before they found his. "Thank you for…you know. I was almost gone back there."

He nodded in acceptance, but had to smile. "Boy, I bet that hurt to say."

Aria sighed and rolled her eyes away from him. "You have no idea." She slapped him on the arm. "Let's go."

"Your wish is my command."

Bailey followed through, humored, but kept his smile to himself. Yes, it had hurt, and probably in more ways than one, but he could respect Aria for the effort. She had lost a lot in the space of a few seconds, and they would be lucky if they didn't lose more. He thought of Bray laying dead on the dock behind them, Kelham, the poor little kids in the elementary school, and every soul he'd passed along the way with merely a glance on his way to this place and time. He thought of his family on Earth. If there was any way this war could play out in a positive light, Bailey couldn't see it. And though he wondered what hell was currently meeting the people of Earth, he could not see that either.

Neither of them could see how this would end. They didn't see the Citadel closed into the shape of a bullet, the bright beam of light that shot from its base, seemingly boring into Earth with the force of a drill. Nor could they see the coming armada, the fleet of ships from every civilization that had formed in the galaxy since the last Reaper invasion, organic and inorganic, friend and foe, mercenary and soldier. Their ships transected the blackness of space, past stars and planets and moons, comets and asteroids, to bring the Reapers their final gift—the Crucible—the very tool the Illusive Man believed would give him complete control. Even he, with all his amassing power, could not see how he would come to his end.

Like his chess board analogy, the players had all taken their places for endgame. The Illusive Man was racing for the Tower in time for the Crucible's arrival, with Aria and Bailey hot on his trail. Kolyat and his team were on the way to securing the Council and bringing them to safety. Jack, her kids, and the Salarian Tactical Group on Earth were trekking toward Westminster Cathedral, toward a ragtag group of fighters with just enough spunk left in them to believe they could save the world, though in truth, they were barely holding on.

And in space, hundreds of light years away, a Commander led the way to the final confrontation. With a wealth of determination in her stride, a heart beating with pride for every member of her crew, past and present, she directed her ship like a bullet between the stars. The destination was Earth, and there was only one objective…

 _To bring the fight to the Reapers._

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 **Well? What are your thoughts on this chapter? I appreciate all of my readers, but I would love it if you left a review. Don't know if I'm doing a good job without your input.**


	16. ONE Hope

**Back to Liara and the Normandy...**

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 _ **MASS EFFECT: ONE**_

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 _"It's been a long journey, and no one is coming out without scars."_

 _~Shepard~_

 **ONE Hope**

* * *

 **On An Unknown Planet**

 _Shepard is alive._

 ** _T_** wo spherical satellites held a position over the horizon like sentries, keeping guard over the injured ship. It lay slumbering until the time came for it to rise as the fabled phoenix. For now, it must rest and repair, unlike the other sentry keeping watch a pace away as the distant, yet radiantly bright star hung low in the sky. There would be no rest for the daughter of the late Matriarch Benezia, nor could she say if she would ever repair.

The Normandy had become stifling, claustrophobic. She needed the fresh air. Not just to breathe, but to cool off, to think. There was no thinking inside. Just anger, mad frustration and something worse than either—a sense of despair. It hung on the air like a bad smell. Out here, the air was sweet, verdantly redolent of green grass and trees. This planet, or moon…whatever it was…reminded her of home, mostly of the city where she had gone to university as a young asari. Though there were many schools and city centers, the grounds surrounding the university was environmentally lush, or at least, it used to be. Hills, trees, mountains, lakes, rivers, gorgeous countryside. Her best memory of that time had been excavating a newly discovered prothean ruin along a mountain ridge. A river ran vertically from it, and a above it a descending waterfall. She could remember working, listening to the thundering waterfall, reveling in the mist a soft breeze carried to her.

What do they call it when it seems your life in the past seems to meet up with life in the future? Full circle. Yes, that is it.

Here she stood, just steps away from the Normandy, and in her sights were trees lush with flat, green leaves, their trunks twisted into shapes she could not have drawn on paper, but which the wind and time had formed like sculptures on display in an art house. Two stood before her, their entwined branches overhead forming a natural arbor for her to stand beneath. Were it raining, it would surely keep her dry. The sight brought back so many good memories, but it was the sound of falling water, not the memory of it, that soothed her raging heart. Upon a distant rocky ledge, water cascaded to what…a waiting river or lake? Liara could not see from her vantage point. The water fell and disappeared from her view, but the sound of it could not escape her ears.

Breathe, she told herself. Take in the greenery. Smell the sweet air. Meditate on the calming sound of falling water.

 _Joker twisting in his seat as she stormed out the bridge exit. "Liara, what happened? What's wrong?"_

Liara shook her head. "Stop," she whispered to herself. "Stop thinking."

 _Ashley, red-faced and angry, pointing an accusatory finger. "You act like you're the only one who's lost someone!"_

"Shut up." Liara covered her ears, hoping it would drown out the voices, but all it did was shut them in.

 _Shepard standing in the midst of destruction, red beams of death falling from the sky. In their last goodbye, she touches one hand to Liara's cheek. "No matter what happens…you mean everything to me, Liara. You always will."_

Taut as elastomer stretched to its breaking point, Liara snapped. With a howl that was every bit as much a cry of despair, a bolt of biotics as deadly as any lightning strike ripped from her hands. It rocketed toward the tree on her left, snapping it in half mid-trunk, sending the top half in one direction while the bottom held to the ground with everything it had. The intertwined branches overhead popped one by one in rapid succession, sounding like the retort of rifle fire, as the top half landed on the ground with a shuddering thud. The force of the blast sent any shrapnel away from her, but she felt them nonetheless. They were like tiny stings of pain to her whole body.

This was not right. This was not how it was supposed to end. She had not gone from one end of the galaxy to the other just for it all to be taken from her at the end of the story. How could life bring her so close to hope only to hand her despair? Why?

Liara sank to her knees and let the tears come.

The crunch of unsteady feet in the grass behind her. "Whoa," came the familiar voice of Joker. "Um, I hope I wasn't the one who just pissed you off."

Liara pulled her head up to see the damage wrought on the environment she had praised only moments ago. The havoc she caused had blocked her sight of the distant rocky ledge and its cascade of water, which only made the tears worse.

"You okay?" Joker asked.

Liara wouldn't look at him. She couldn't. "No, I am not."

"What happened?"

She sighed. "Did you not ask _Commander_ Williams?" She couldn't bring herself to call her Ashley.

"I'd rather ask you." His hand fell on her shoulder. "Tell me, Liara. I have to know."

It was selfish to despair her own loss when his was just as profound, yet she couldn't keep what they had learned from him forever. He deserved to know what lay before them even if she had trouble facing it herself. Liara reluctantly turned a tear-stained face to him and told him…

 **EEE**

 **On The Normandy, half an hour ago…**

 _P_ _ronto!_

Joker's demand alone would have sent her running for the bridge as she had been running for engineering minutes before, but as Javik had blocked her exit then, Glyph blocked it now.

Javik placed a cautious hand on her arm. "Be careful, Liara. We do not know if the drone was damaged during the crash. It may be hostile."

Were this any other moment in time, she might have laughed. Glyph? Dangerous? Her little ball of light was as dangerous as a pyjak. A sentiment which Glyph seemed ready to corroborate. "No, prothean, I am not hostile, nor am I damaged. I have been spending the time since the crash repairing myself, and several other onboard systems. Dr. T'Soni, As you no doubt are aware, long-range communications are back online."

Even as her feet begged to run past the pesky drone, Liara stood her ground and stared at Glyph. "You repaired communications?"

"As communication is an integral part of my assignment, I felt it necessary to complete the task before returning to full working order."

"I see…so, the flashing lights…?"

"Yes, Dr. T'Soni, that was I. Now that the work is complete, I can inform you of several urgent messages—"

"Not now, Glyph. Compile a report for when I return."

Though the drone was quick with a reply, "Of course, Dr. T'Soni," Liara did not wait to hear it. With Javik close behind, she sailed past Glyph, through the lounge and toward the lift. Eighteen-hundred hours was but ten minutes away. She had precious little time to make it to Joker. What could he possibly have discovered that she did not already know?

Since the moment Garrus dragged her back onto the Normandy as she watched Shepard run toward the unknown, toward whatever would end the war, Liara had not known hope. It came to her now like a blossoming flower, like a bloom of light at the center of her heart. She guarded it, but couldn't let herself believe in it just yet. Hope needed an anchor, something to hang its possibilities upon. Shepard had always been that anchor, even when she lay charred and in pieces upon a Cerberus operating table. Liara had guarded her hope then, held it close and safe in her care, until Shepard walked through the door of her office on Illium. Hope had blossomed in her that day, disregarding the thoughts of her mind that told her this version of Shepard may not be the same as the person she used to know. But she was. Hope had proven true.

As the old saying goes, lightning does not strike the same place twice. Liara thought the same of luck. One does not always have the chance of meeting it more than once in a lifetime. And yet, meteorologists had proven the old lightning saying false many millenniums ago. Maybe, just maybe, her hope had a chance of winning out…maybe luck would find her again this day.

Liara raced toward the lift, leaving Javik in her wake. He was bulky, and the armor he wore night and day like a talisman against the dark days hindered swift movement. Liara had no such encumbrances. She outpaced the prothean, reached the lift seconds before he did and jabbed at the button as though sheer force would move it toward the crew deck faster. It did not.

"Calm yourself," the prothean commanded. "You are drawing the attention of others on deck."

"I do not care," she answered heavy-breathed. It was a lie. Already, she chastised herself for making a spectacle. Crew members were whispering, some with fear, some with hope, "What's going on?" To make matters worse, Dr. Chakwas appeared beside the lift at her right.

"Liara, are you alright? Is anything wrong?"

Trying to get her breathing under control, she answered with a smile that might or might not be genuine. "Of course, not. I'm fine."

Liara jabbed at the lift button again and Javik slapped her hand away. "Everything is… 'all right,' doctor," Javik said in Liara's behalf. "We are merely on our way to the gathering in the war room."

"So was I," Chakwas said, "when I saw the two of you running. Has something happened?"

Liara cast the doctor a wary sideways glance just as the lift doors opened. On the other side were all the faces she had come to know over the years: Tali, Garrus, Adams, Cortez. Vega, too, but she hadn't know him nearly as long. The same expectancy wore on those well-loved faces.

"What's happened?" Tali asked. Of the five of them, Tali's face was the only one Liara could never read, but the tone of her voice and the querulous resting of hands upon hips told Liara Tali's feelings without having to see her face.

"Yeah," Garrus added. "Why are we being called to the war room?"

She could have answered. She could have blurted all that she knew right out here in front of the lift, but that would not be prudent. Javik might slap more than just her hand. Thus, she stepped onto the lift and allowed Javik and Dr. Chakwas the time to follow her, allowing the lift doors close, before she spoke. Even now, though, she held back.

"From what I understand, long-range communications are back online."

"Awesome," Cortez said under his breath.

"Damn straight," Vega said. "Does that mean we're about to get off this rock?"

Chakwas crossed her arms. "Last I looked, we don't even know where this rock is."

"True," Adams said with a perturbed shake of his head. "What _has_ happened? Tali and I were noticing some rather strange power fluctuations."

Javik nodded once. "Dr. T'Soni's info drone has been making repairs. It would appear it has no intention of turning on us…yet."

"Yes," the doctor added, suspicion in the raise of her eyebrow, "but it would also appear that's not what's most important. Whatever the news was, it had Dr. T'Soni on the run…which, I might add, she shouldn't be doing right now."

Garrus, despite being a head taller than the rest of them, shoved forward to the front of the crowd. "Is it Shepard? It is, isn't it? Has there been word?"

Garrus had always been the more astute one of the group. Though she was asari, and had never known anything but sisters, Garrus was like the big brother she could never have. He might be tall, slender (but almost as wide as her other big brother Wrex), and lethal behind the trigger of a sniper rifle, inside he was a softie who cared about his little sister and loved Shepard almost as much as she did. One day, he was going to make the most amazing uncle any little asari child could have, but for now he was just a good friend there to console. Liara thanked the goddess for Garrus Vakarian.

Gripping his extended hand for comfort, Liara looked at the curious faces of the rest of her crewmates. They all wanted to know the same thing. One would think the question should have been, "Is the war over? Are the Reapers dead?" But that's not what she saw reflected in their eyes. The question was, "Is Shepard alive?" She had the answer, but like her hope, it was a carefully guarded bloom of light and positivity that she didn't think she could speak to.

Liara couldn't help but look away when she answered. "I do not know." The lift doors opened behind her and those before her were bathed in the blue-white light of the command center. Liara sighed. "However, I am certain we will find out momentarily."

Javik, his gaze upon her as heavy as her own fears, was the first to the leave the lift. His silent disapproval was worse than a spoken one. Should she tell them of her "vision" as he called it? Was it real? Was she to believe it as truth? Was Shepard really alive? Hope told her, "Yes." Reality, the voice of the Shadow Broker, told her, "Find the evidence first." She should have waited to hear Glyph's urgent messages first. One of them might have been from Feron. He may have the evidence she sorely needed…and silently dreaded.

The others followed Javik onto the command deck, but Liara hung back a few paces. Her destination was not the war room, not initially. No need to raise any brows of speculation. This was merely a fact-finding mission. Joker had something for her, and by the sound of his voice, it was something important. Still, two blue eyes had her in their sights and his would not let her go. Liara got not more than two steps toward the bridge before Garrus's great height loomed over her.

"Liara," he said, his voice empathetic but also demanding. "You know something. Tell me what it is."

How she wanted to let him in, to tell him all that she had experienced over the last several hours, of her dreams and what she thought they meant. But the voice of the Shadow Broker was strong. It would not let her speak of the intangible. If it could not be touched or seen, it was no more than a rumor. Rumors were like campfires left unattended. They sometimes bloomed into full blown forest fires, and only truth could snuff them out. She would not offer Garrus a rumor or an idea built upon a dream. He wasn't a dreamer. There weren't many turians who were. Garrus would want a truth as real as the sniper rifle he often held in his two hands.

Liara smiled at him and gave him all she had. "Hope, Garrus. I have not given up hope."

He nodded. It wasn't the answer he wanted, but he nodded.

"Joker wanted to see me on the bridge," she said, releasing herself from his grip. "I will meet you in the war room in a few moments."

Turning away from him wasn't easy, but it was necessary. She hated that even with her friends she tended to act the Shadow Broker, giving curt answers or nods, speaking only in direct truths, not letting anyone in. She had done this even with Shepard once she'd first return to the Normandy. It had taken her some time to return to their old familiarity, the way they used to talk for long hours about anything and everything while they stared up at the stars. Now, Liara kept more things to herself than she shared with those she cared about. Garrus was her closest friend aside from Shepard, and she hadn't bothered to share her pregnancy with him. More and more, she began to hate how being the Shadow Broker had transformed her…nearly as much as she loved it.

Swift feet took her away from Garrus and past the command center, where Specialist Traynor now stood at her post. The last time Liara had seen her, a winded Traynor was ferrying messages about the ship. With the power and ship-wide communications operable again, she was back to her old self, and her old job.

"Dr. T'Soni," she called as Liara passed.

Liara halted reluctantly, eager as she was to get to the bridge, but she put on the face of one who hadn't a care in the world. Lying to Traynor was easier than lying to Garrus. "Yes?"

Traynor sidled to her and whispered, "So, what's all the hubbub about?"

"Hub…bub?"

"You know, noise, racket, hullabaloo."

Liara's brows drew together. "If you are referring to the meeting in the war room, I do not know."

Traynor's job as specialist might have given her unique access to priority missions and information about every member of the staff, but it didn't mean she wasn't as clueless as the rest of them. She huffed and crossed her arms. "You've got to know something. That new commander of ours won't clue me in on a thing. She's locked me out of anything but the most mundane of information. Has there been word of Shepard? Is she alright?"

The Shadow Broker's visage almost vanished. "I am sorry, but I have to get to the bridge."

She turned from the specialist, and again, it was easier than turning away from Garrus. She left the command center behind her, where Shepard always stood to direct their travel through the galaxy and where now Traynor stood huffing and boring two eyes into the back of Liara's head. Down the gangway toward the bridge where Alliance servicemen and women usually sat manning the Normandy's basic operations. And now, at the bridge door, where on the other side Joker and a barely clung to hope waited. Hope that right now seem an inconceivable idea.

The door opened at her omni-signature, and instinct forced her eyelids to squint. Time in space had attuned her to the dim lighting on the bridge designed to keep the pilot's focus on his console. Typically, other than the bright light of the terminals at each station, the only other light on the bridge was starlight through the bow windows. That was not the case anymore. On the horizon, the setting sun shot across a countryside of jutting rocks and overgrown jungle fauna, right into the Normandy, turning the cockpit's relaxing nighttime aura into a dismal plasma explosion.

Liara raised a hand to shield her eyes. "Do you not have some sort of shade, Jeff?"

"Why?" Joker asked from the pilot seat. "Because our future is so damn bright?"

"What?"

"Nevermind. Sorry about the sun. The tint is up, but it isn't much help. We sorta crashed wrong."

"It is incredibly bright. How long before it sets?"

"The sun has been setting for hours now. Apparently, we crash landed on a planet whose rotation is set at zero to eight kilometers an hour. Based on the Normandy's calculations, I'll be completely blind in about thirty minutes. How about that? A crippled _and_ a blind pilot! That'll be a first for the Normandy."

Liara stood next to the pilot's chair. "Is everything alright, Jeff?"

"No, but it felt good to vent," Joker said, ball cap lowered to shield his eyes.

"Do you know what's happening?"

"Not as much as what you will once you get to that meeting. All I can tell you right now is that long-range communications are up."

"I know," she said, feeling guilty to continue.

"You know? How?"

"Glyph told me. It's the one who repaired the damage, believe it or not."

"I don't, but okay. How the hell is Glyph operating?"

She heard the unspoken half of that sentence even though Joker didn't say a word. _How the hell is Glyph operating while EDI lay dead in the AI core?_

"I've been asking myself the same question. It claims to have been operating this whole time within the ship's systems."

"Really?" Liara watched his eyes flit upon a few unseen thoughts, then he focused back on her. "I thought I noticed a few glitches."

"Yes, I believe that was Glyph."

"Well, I guess that's a positive sign. But I have one other thing I want to show you. I thought if anyone should see this, it should be you."

"What do you have?"

Joker crooked a finger. "Get down here."

Liara knelt beside his chair, waiting for him to point some particular bit of information out, but instead he shook his head and looked at her pointedly. "I don't know what the hell is going on. Ash is acting all weird and stuff. One minute, she and I were about to try contacting Earth through whatever open comm we could find. We actually found one. Pushed long range scanners to the max. There was mostly static, but we heard a few garbled words. The only thing we could really make out was 'reapers.'"

"Oh no."

"Then, BAM, communications came back like a firecracker. There was so much chatter, though, we couldn't hear what anyone was saying. Then, next thing we know, communications drop like a stone. Every voice ghosts, except one—Alliance Systems Command. It's tagged 'Priority Communication, Captain's eyes only.'"

"What did it say?"

"Captain's eyes only, remember. I don't know what it said. Ashley read it. Her face went white and that's the last I saw of her until she made that announcement over the comm-system."

Liara's heart seemed to miss a beat. A pain loomed there that caused her to rub the tender spot between her breasts. She closed her eyes from the brightness of the dwindling sunlight and utter a mental prayer.

Joker continued. "I never got a chance to show her what I need you to see."

Liara opened her eyes to see something of a glimmer in Jeff's. One corner of his mouth seemed to raise in a flicker of the same hope that lived within her heart. He pointed to a panel on the right side of his console. One light blinked on and off, on and off.

"What is that?"

"I monitor the vitals of crewmembers on every away mission. Whether we're landing on a hotbed like the Cerberus base, or taking a little excursion on the Citadel. From this seat, I know exactly how my team is doing."

The hope that had bloomed in her heart like a tiny light now exploded as brightly as the setting sun outside, but she couldn't allow it to overwhelm her. There could be any number of explanations except for the one she hoped for.

"Are there any crew members unaccounted for?"

"No, everyone's here that's supposed to be here."

"Has anyone gone outside the ship since the crash?"

"Other than me, you, Garrus, and a few other intrepid souls with a Christopher Columbus fixation who stepped out earlier, everyone is onboard as of right now."

"Then, who is it?" Her gloved hand gripped his shoulder tighter than it should have on someone so fragile.

Joker touched the blinking light as thought it were his long lost friend, and for the second time, Liara watched tears spring into his eyes. "That's Shepard. She's alive."

"By the goddess."

Like the voice in her dream, the blinking light called to her, pulling on her, drawing her toward it as inexorably as gravity. The call was so strong, she nearly felt the sensation of weightlessness as she had in the dream. The light was as steady as a heartbeat, and Liara's heart beat with it. They beat as one. She reached out to touch it as though to do so would rekindle the connection she felt in the dream, but it did not. The image displayed before her was nothing more than a holographic beam stretched across a computer console. Still, Liara smiled. _Shepard is alive._

" _I knew you would not abandon me."_

Joker's hand touched her arm. "Liara…" If her voice had carried, it did not register on his face. "…there's just one thing. The signal is weak."

"Weak? What do you mean? It appears strong."

Joker sighed. "I can't say for sure. For all I know, distance is what's weakening the signal. We're still in the process of mapping the system we're in. But here's the weird part. The signal wasn't there before communications came back up, and wherever the hell we are, we're too damn far away to pick anything from the Citadel. My guess is…" He looked around the cockpit, making sure the door was shut before turning back to her. "…someone piggybacked the signal all the way to the Normandy so that we would see it."

Who? How? Why? Those were the obvious questions, but Liara didn't ask them. No point. The why was a given. Someone wanted them to find Shepard, but the who and the how were up for a debate neither she nor Jeff had time for. Could be anybody's guess. The important thing was that someone had seen fit to validate what Liara believed within her heart. Shepard was alive. Somewhere out there, her heart was still beating…and there was little she could do about it now.

"Then again," Joker said. "I could be wrong. The signal could be weak because…"

Liara patted his arm when all she wanted to do was hug him. "Jeff, we have hope."

When he looked at her, she saw only loss reflected in his eyes. "Yeah, hope that someone finds her in time."

Her personal comm crackled in her ear. It was Traynor. "Dr. T'Soni, you're needed in the war room, ASAP."

"I'll be right there," she said, after touching two fingers to the comm at her ear. Liara got to her feet. "Keep me updated, Jeff."

Joker shook his head. "No, you keep _me_ updated. I want to know everything that happens in there. Ash is a good gal, and all, but I've got a bad feeling she's been holding out on us."

"What do you mean?"

"Just trust me."

Jeff was, by nature, a joker. Thus, the nickname. If he wasn't cracking wise, he was throwing sarcasm around like party favors. But everything and everyone had changed since the crash. No, be honest. Everything had changed from the moment the Citadel exploded in a bright orange light and every defensive fleet still capable of FTL travel retreated. Disquiet eked from Jeff's every pore. It would steal her heart if she let it. She had to keep guard over hope. It was all she had left.

"Always," she said, leaving Joker and the slowly dwindling sun behind.

 **EEE**

 ** _W_** ithin the confines of her quarters, it was easier for Liara to hold onto hope. There, nothing really changed. With the starboard windows closed, she held the outside world at bay. No blinding sun to shine in tired eyes. No views of a planet unknown to preoccupy the mind. She could work, shut all other distractions out and pretend she still had a job to do as Shadow Broker.

Not so in the conference room. Three huge starboard windows opened onto the outside world. The room was flooded in the dwindling light of this world's day. The twisted trunk of a tree dominated one window, while green, alien plant life and a rugged rock face encompassed the other two. It was an unusual sight to behold to say the least. It magnified their current problem, and the fact that Shepard wasn't here.

Thank the goddess they weren't holding the meeting here. Liara wouldn't let the sight outside the windows dim the brightness of her hope. She raced passed it and into the war room, where the expressions on some of the most dearest faces she had ever known were what dimmed her hope as mutely as the lighting inside the room.

The "odd man out." It's what she had once again become, just like the day she first stepped foot onto the Normandy. Everyone had eyed her with suspicion because of her mother's dealings with Saren Arterius. _If Matriarch Benezia was a traitor to the Council, surely her daughter was, as well,_ they must have thought. Ashley had been one of the biggest opposers to her being brought aboard, and initially hostile towards her. She had changed her attitude over the years. Trust had bloomed between them. They had become close, crewmates, friends, especially during these last dark days of potential annihilation.

Yet, just as change had altered Jeff, it had also altered Ashley. Her suspicion toward Liara was no longer there. It had not returned since the early days, when the threat of Reaper invasion loomed over them like a thunderstorm in the distance. Something else had replaced Ashley's suspicion. Liara could only give it one name—apprehension.

"Good," Ashley said with a sigh. "Everyone's here."

In fact, they were. Each and every member of the team she had come to know since first joining the Normandy stood around the war terminal where a holographic display of the Crucible in construction had once been displayed. Now, there was nothing but a dark, circular terminal, half of which stations weren't even operational. It deepened the darkness in the room to a disheartening level, raising the apprehension in everyone to uncomfortable heights. Javik included. His faith-strengthening speech about enduring as Shepard had waned in the waning light of the war room.

"Spill it, Ash," James said. "Don't leave us hanging."

"Yeah, what's happened?" Garrus asked.

Beside him, Tali's shoulders drooped. "It's not good, is it?"

They were alone. No other crew members besides those of higher rank filled the space. Still, Ashley looked around before facing the crew with her hands clasped behind her back and her shoulders squared. For a moment, she was the image of the stoical Admiral Hackett as some of them had seen him just before the mission to retake Earth.

Ashley cleared her throat. "As some of you might have already figure out, we're not home yet."

"For some of us, home is practically gone," Liara said. Garrus and James nodded in agreement.

"Or newly reacquired," Tali added.

Javik crossed his arms and leaned against the console like a teacher chastising his students. "Either way, there will be much rebuilding in your future."

"Regardless, we're here now," Ashley said.

The doctor frowned at that. "What exactly do you mean by that?"

Cortez followed up with, "Where _is_ 'here'?"

"The ass end of nowhere," Vega muttered.

"Can we cut the chatter please!"

Stress had an interesting way of contorting personalities, reshaping character. Add command to the mix and the nicest person can turn into a bellowing bear. Stress had claimed Ashley Williams as subtly as indoctrination. Each member of the team looked questioningly at her, and then at each other, and the apprehension in the room grew by leaps and bounds. Liara wasn't prepared to speculate, but her hope was dimming with every new weight brought upon it.

Her teammates awkward expressions culled Ashley's twisting mind-set. She cleared away negativity with a shake of her head. "I'm sorry," she said, stress continuing to lace her tone. She momentarily looked away from them. "We're all in a state of shock here, with unanswered questions. But if you'll please give me a chance to speak, I can answer them."

Everyone held their tongue and waited with bated breath to hear what news she had to offer. Was it to be good or bad?

Ashley heaved one last heavy breath, and continued. "Nearly twenty-four hours have passed since we left Earth. Some of us may have been picked up by shuttlecraft. Some of us may have seen rescue by the Normandy itself. But in those twenty-four hours, we have all experienced the same loss…" Sorrow pricked at the edges of Ashley's forced stoicism and her voice gave a slight tremble. "…the loss of our friend and our commander, Shepard."

The same sorrow begged to pluck at Liara's hope, but she held it safe in the arms of her heart. Her hope was still strong, and yet she kept the truth to herself. Now was not the time to speak of what Joker had shown her.

Ashley composed herself. "Joker did everything he could to reach Shepard in time, but the call for retreat came. If we hadn't taken it, none of us would be here now. We all owe Shepard our lives."

"A thousand times over," Garrus whispered. Pain etched upon his hardened face like a scar upon a scar.

Liara hated the sound of this. They were speaking of her as if she were already dead! How could they give up on their hope so easily? She looked at Javik and saw the same question reflected in him, but he held the truth back, same as her.

Ashley touched a finger to the conference table's computer terminal. "This was the last image the Normandy captured before we made the jump to lightspeed."

An image of the Citadel in its last moments, an orange ball of light at its center that could have held within its bubble one hundred ships or more, hovered before them. At the center of it, the Crucible, the hopeful harbinger of the Reaper's destruction. Liara, however, gravitated to an even smaller point, somewhere at the base of the Citadel tower, where the Crucible and the Citadel met. The location of Shepard's last transmission. She was there. Like the voice that called in her dream, like a beacon in the dark, Liara knew with all her heart that Shepard was at the center of the explosion. In all likelihood, she _was_ the epicenter.

"Most of us already know what happened after, but I've…I've kept some information to myself. Information that I should have shared, but—"

It would seem Joker's fears were true. "What sort of information?" Liara asked, arms crossed, worry in her every intake of breath, as it was with the rest of them.

"I wanted confirmation first before I voiced my fears," she said, as way of explanation, before continuing. "The explosion from the Citadel followed us through the relay. Joker can confirm this part of it. It was like a bullet shot from a rifle and we were in its path. Joker pushed the Normandy to its limits."

Tali nodded to the chief engineer at her left. "Adams and I noticed. We were afraid the ship was about to rip apart."

Ashley nodded. "It nearly did…until the shockwave overtook us. The Normandy was pushed violently out of the relay's corridor. We all felt it. Those of us not strapped to a seat went flying."

Several crewmembers began rubbing at a painful spot. Liara touched a slight bruise on her forehead, Garrus his arm, James his back. They all knew something had happened. Something had caused them to crash land on a miraculously habitable world. This was the first indication as to what.

"Why are we just learning of this now?" Adams asked.

Dr. Chakwas harrumphed. "I think the real question is, where the hell are we?"

Another touch to the console and the image of a solar system with four planets appeared.

Several seconds of silence descended until Garrus spoke. "I'm no cartographer, but I don't recognize this system."

"No," Ashley answered. "You wouldn't. It's uncharted."

"Uncharted?" Liara said.

Ashley nodded and looked away. "I'll need someone to pinpoint our location, but based on trajectory, I guesstimate we're somewhere between the Sol System and the Viper Nebula."

"You mean we might have been thrown as far as southern quadrant of the Skyllian Verge?" The question came from Vega. "That's insane."

Ashley was quick with an answer, but it wasn't one Liara could bear hearing. She hadn't come by the job of the Shadow Broker easily, or on accident. Over the last couple of years, she had discovered a truth about herself she hadn't been ready to believe when she helped Shepard to defeat the previous Shadow Broker, a beastly Yahg from the planet Parnack. Becoming the Shadow Broker was intentional. Whether consciously or unconsciously, Liara preferred not to think on it, but the Shadow Broker she was. Being Shadow Broker came with a certain amount of privileged information that she, like Ashley, didn't readily hand out. But it also meant having a high level of intelligence, and Liara was lightyears far from stupid. If the Crucible's shockwave had traveled along relay corridors with enough force to push the Normandy out into an uncharted system, with what sort of force did the shockwave hit the mass relays themselves?

The desolate look on Ashley's face confirmed Liara's worst nightmares. Her knees weakened. Were it not for the edge of the terminal where her fingers made purchase, she might have met the floor.

"That's not the worst of it," Ashley said.

 _Worst._ Liara was going to be sick. This felt like losing Thessia all over again.

After several seconds of reflective silence, Ashley continued. "Just moments ago, we regained long-range communications. As soon as we did, they went cold, and only one message came through…from Fifth Fleet."

"Hackett." Cortez didn't know whether to raise his head or lower it. A message from the commanding officer of the Fifth Fleet meant one of two outcomes—glory or damnation.

With a nod, Ashley urged the crew to follow her into the communications room. She input a few commands into the console and the three-dimensional visage of Admiral Steven Hackett appeared before them. What he'd have to say would change their fate and the fate of the entire galaxy in a matter of minutes.

"Normandy, Admiral Hackett here. This message is being recorded at oh-seven-hundred hours, Earth time. I hope to hell you receive it. It's been a little more than an hour since the offensive launched upon the Reapers began. There's much I need to tell you. It would be better if I could do so face to face, but the situation being what it is, an encrypted communiqué will have to suffice.

"So, let me start with the good news. We did it. All our hard work, all the lives sacrificed have paid off. We won. The Reapers are dead."

Hackett backed away, a smile on his war-hardened face. He knew he would need to. Had he been standing in the room, the ensuing cheer might have deafened him. The cheers and the clapping of hands, the ear-shattering whistles of Vega, shuddered through Liara like an aftershock. She could not find mirth in this news, for Hackett's smile was fleeting. It lasted only seconds, and in the Normandy's shout of joy that he could not hear, it went away completely. The bad news was coming. Their victory had come at a price. The question was, how steep?

Liara looked across the room at Ashley and Javik to see that she wasn't the only devoid of cheer.

"The reports have been coming in from all over the galaxy. Reapers felled in the city streets. Reapers floating like carcasses in space. Their minions falling as ash to the ground. Thessia has reported a cease fire, an end to hostilities, and we've received vids of people celebrating on the streets of Earth.

"Still, there is a need for caution. We've not heard from Tuchanka, and Palaven is still dark."

At the news, Garrus lowered his head.

"That's why we're asking for comm-silence. All channels must be left open for emergency purposes until we can ascertain that the threat is truly gone. Normandy, you'll be allowed one communiqué to inform us of your exact position, as well as the well being of your ship and your crew. Beyond that, we expect radio silence."

"So, we're not allowed to contact family or friends?" Tali asked.

Hackett continued, the quarian's question going unanswered. "There is another reason for, however. This is a rather sensitive piece of information that has not yet gone out over the extranet or in any other manner of communication. We're hoping to keep it that way for some time until we can understand what happened. Our most recent allies in the fight against the Reapers, the geth, forged by your commander herself, have become inactive. Their vessels, their entire crew. The reasons why are not yet fully understood, but the general consensus of the scientific minds on this ship and of those on the quarian flotilla nearby is reaper technology.

"We're still gathering information about what happened on the Citadel, but the fact of the matter remains…according to reports we've received from all corners of the galaxy, the shockwave generated by the Citadel, what we now know as a Reaper construct, and the Crucible has rippled through every relay corridor. The shockwave seems to have had a purpose in that it jumped from one mass relay to the next. Like the Citadel, we know that all mass relays were constructed by the Reapers in order to facilitate their goals, that of wiping out all organic life. This weapon against them that we helped to create has effectively crippled the mass relays. By some accounts, the relays have been severely damaged or even destroyed completely."

"Shit," Vega muttered. Shock sent him backward a few steps until his back met the wall.

The time for cheers had passed.

He wasn't the only one. One by one, the seriousness of their situation began to dawn on them. They were stuck on a planet in uncharted batarian space, untold lightyears between them and home. For some of them, home was a place—a planet, a space station, a flotilla of ships. For Liara, home lay dying on the Citadel, a blinking light of hope that, in her mind, had begun to dim into blackness. She wished Ashley would end the sound of Hackett's voice. She no longer wanted to hear his incessant droning.

"Now for the bad news. When we didn't note your signature coming through the relay, we began a massive search. You along with a few dozen others didn't make it through. Most of those ships are likely dead and gone. Imagine our surprise when we discovered your signal close to the Skyllian Verge. In the time it will take this message to reach you, you will probably already have discovered how far you are from where you should have ended up. You're not the only one. Several others were separated in the retreat. We can only speculate as to the cause. Suffice it to say, you're in a tough situation, and it's not any better on our end.

"We arrived in the Arcturus system seconds before the relay's core overloaded. We're lucky to be alive, but the relay is inoperable. That being said, we still have a chance of making it back to Earth. If we head back now, we stand the chance of returning in…" Hackett shrugged. "…God, even at FTL speeds it could take some of us seven, eight months. You, Normandy…well, I don't have to tell you what that means for you."

Lost and in shock, Cortez blurted, "Means we rot out here."

No one could dispute him. Not even Hackett.

"Whether the relays can even be rebuilt is also a matter for speculation. Clearly, the Crucible was designed to destroy the Reapers, to obliterate them just as we had hoped, but we never thought of the side effects. Everything, and I mean down to the last atom, everything Reaper has been destroyed."

The three-dimensional Hackett became a close up of the Arcturus Prime Relay, its gyroscopic rings in pieces, floating in space. An audible gasp from Chakwas, another curse from Vega, a turian one from Garrus and an unutterable mutter from Javik. If it was a curse, it was in a language no one had spoken in thousands of years.

As Hackett spoke, the images changed. "The mass relays, the geth, even the Citadel."

The succeeding images reveal a dead geth ship, as well as an indistinct image of the Citadel. It appeared to be an image taken from earth, likely from a ground to space telescope powerful enough to show the space station just as Liara had seen it in her dream. Opened like a flower, but dead. It was worse than anything her dreaming could have conjured. Whole sections of the station's arms had torn away, blown apart by the explosions they had seen in the retreat. The station had gone dark. What life it might still hold would not be there for long.

Legs that had held her up through the worst of it, now gave out on her. Is this what the long life of an asari offered over that of other species? She had fought and fought to hold onto the people she loved, only to have them taken away from her at the last moment. Her mother, Shepard, Feron, and now, when every wrong in the universe had suddenly been made right, she had lost again. The fight had been taken from her. Barely over one hundred years old and what had this life done for her but take and take?

Liara gave up the fight and fell to her knees. Concerned voice overshadowed her. Hands tried to help her up, but she would not yield to them. She held onto the edge of hope. A poor substitute for the anchor she needed.

Hackett droned on…

"Though difficult to witness, I'm sure this is not news to you. The Normandy was hit with the same shockwave as the rest of us. Only our ships are not based upon Reaper technology. You've no doubt sustained serious damage, not only to the ship, but to your onboard AI. You can confirm or deny this in your communiqué—"

Chakwas whispered EDI's name as Engineer Adams looked to Tali. "Could this by why we can't get off the ground?"

"It's worth looking into."

"What's the point, _pendejo_?" Vega said. "There's no going home. Cortez is right. We're probably gonna rot out here."

Ashley paused the vid mid-sentence. "Quiet."

"—but we're starting to wonder if the destruction of Reaper tech doesn't have greater significance; if it hasn't affected more than mere artificial intelligence. In the end, the questions that remain are why, and how?" Hackett sighed. The worst news was yet to come. "What I can tell you is this—Commander Shepard and Captain Anderson were the only ones to make it up to the Citadel alive. The death toll on the ground was…staggering…"

"Anderson, too?" Cortez said, shaking his head in sorrow. "Ah man."

"We may never know what Shepard and Anderson had to face in the final seconds before the blast wave, but one thing I know for certain, Commander Shepard never gave up. She fought bravely right to the end. The last words she spoke to me were, 'What do you need me to do?' She was a soldier through and through, unendingly proud of the men and women she served with. You, the crew of the Normandy, are the shining examples of what soldiers like Shepard and Anderson stood for. Do not look upon their deaths as a tragedy or a loss. Look upon it as it truly is, a sacrifice. They sacrificed their lives so that others may live, so that every asari, every turian, quarian, salarian, krogan and batarian…and yes, even one prothean, may live. Do not ever look upon that as a tragedy. They are heroes in my book, and their sacrifice will live on in us, in our children and in our children's children."

When he finished, every eye in the room glistened. Those that could, anyway. And from the eyes that couldn't be seen, there were sniffles.

"I await your report. Hackett out."

 **EEE**

 ** _I_** n the interim between Hackett's announcements, Liara had regained her feet. She had known what was coming next and she had resolved to face it with dignity. She was the Shadow Broker after all. She had to be strong. If not for herself, then for the rest of the crew. For the sake of posterity, and for all those who come after, the Shadow Broker must record how the head of Alliance Command would break the news. Would he be forthcoming? Would he tell the truth? Or would he tell them what they needed to hear because there was nothing they could do to save their savior?

In the end, Hackett did just what she thought he would. He pronounced Shepard dead. He let them believe it to be true because…what could they do? What could _he_ do? They were both stuck in the same situation. Lightyears from home with no reasonable way to get back in time. Like triage after a battle, the ones on the edge of death take second seat to those on the edge of life. They were in a tough enough situation without knowing that Shepard might just be alive on the Citadel, and that no matter how hard they tried, no matter what mental effort they put into restoring the Normandy, they would not get there in time to help her. In a way, she applauded Hackett for his discernment, and yet she damned him for his lie. He had taken Liara's hope and he had crushed it, along with everyone else's.

Silence lingered after, but Hackett's voice seemed to drone on, an echo of the emptiness in their hearts.

"So, that's it, then," said the lone turian voice in the room, and there was such anguish in it. "She's gone."

" _Keelah_ , I cannot believe it."

"And Anderson," Vega said, punching the wall hard enough that it was a wonder he didn't leave a hole. "Son of a bitch! That's not how this was supposed to end!"

Tears drying on her face, Liara hardened her dying fragment of hope. She _was_ the Shadow Broker and she would not break.

Crossing her arms defiantly, she said, "You are wrong. That is exactly how it was supposed to end. Whatever she may have promised each and every one of us, Shepard always knew this mission would claim her life. She knew that one day, whether she ended the Reapers or not, she would have to leave us, she would have to finish the mission on her own. You know this as well as I do. Everyone one of you. Do not say you did not know. Hackett spoke the truth. She gave her life for us."

"And why do you think she did this?" Javik asked. He was not challenging her, but backing her. In his eyes, he seemed to whisper that he knew what she was trying to do.

"Because, that is who Shepard is. A selfless person, who cared not for her own concerns, but for the lives of those around her. She would not want us to mourn. Not now, not knowing what she did to ensure our future."

"What future is that?" Cortez asked.

"You are alive, are you not? You still breathe the free air. That is because of Shepard." Liara turned her gaze to each one of them in turn. "Perhaps none of us will live out our future they way we would have wished it, but at least we can live it. If she were with us, would she not have said as much? Tell me if I am wrong. Would she not have done whatever it took to get home, and if home were not an option, would she not also have done whatever it took to make a life for us out here?"

The faces were somber, but the answers in return were what Liara had wanted to hear. Several merely nodded, but from some she heard an agreeable "yeah" or "we can do this."

"Let's make Shepard proud of us once again. Let's show her that we have what it takes to go on."

"Liara's right," Ashley said from her corner of the communications room. She had been hovering far away, expecting to be called out on holding back information from them. Despite the heavy weight that had been laid upon her shoulders, Liara's words had roused her. "We do what we can to make this a short stay by continuing to repair the Normandy, but no matter what happens, we go on, and we thank our lucky stars we're not still staring down the ugly maw of a Reaper way out here in the middle of nowhere."

On the other side of the table, Garrus cleared his throat. Liara had watched him throughout her entire oration. Garrus had been one of the nodders. She watched him struggle with this new understanding of their situation. She could sympathize. The hole in her heart was as gaping as a black hole, though she kept it well hidden, but Garrus wore his heart on his sleeve and it was broken. She waited anxiously for him to speak. When he did, it was not what she expected.

"What are your orders…Commander?" he said, his attention upon Ashley. The title was more difficult for him to say than Liara knew, but at the end of the day, Garrus was still a soldier. And a good soldier always led by example however dire the circumstances.

His acceptance had strengthened Ashley. Before delivering her orders to the crew, she relaxed her shoulders and released her pent up tension with a sigh. The orders that followed had not changed since they crash landed—get the Normandy up and running. They would deal with whatever came after when they had time to deal with it.

Liara listened as she paired Tali again with Adams, along with the unorthodox addition of Joker, to work on the engines. As per normal operations, she put Cortez in charge of making sure their shuttle craft was in working order, and paired him with Vega to search for and repair hull breaches or damage to landing struts. Garrus was in charge of main battery despite his argument that the weapons system were fried. They were all expected to use whatever crewmen they needed to get the job done. Of them all, however, Liara was the only one not give a specific job. Her job during the entire mission to stop the Reapers had been being the Shadow Broker. Information about the war across the galaxy and what the Reapers were up to had been invaluable. Shepard couldn't have succeeded without her.

So it would seem that Ashley felt the same way. Dismissing the rest of the crew, she asked Liara to remain. Ashley waited as everyone filed out, giving Garrus a moment to ask Liara if she was alright, to which Liara said she would be fine. She could not let him see how utterly beaten she was. She had but one glimmer of hope left and it was up to their new commander as to whether or not it would remain.

Once everyone had gone, Liara forced a semi-smile onto her face and tried not to cross her arms when she turned to face Ashley. Her new commander's reaction was not as forced. Her smile of relief was as genuine as the tree outside the conference room window.

"How can I be of help, Commander?"

"There's no need to be so formal," Ashley said. "We're friends, Liara. I asked you to stay behind partly because I'd like for you to be in charge of determining our location. With your setup as Shadow Broker, you probably have the most extensive maps of the galaxy than any military organization ever has. You might be able to pinpoint exactly where we are."

"And the other reason?"

"I wanted to thank you. I know what Shepard meant to you. Those words couldn't have been easy for you to say, but you rallied the crew, you made them stronger, and that's what they need right now. That's what we all need right now if we're to get through this."

Liara nodded once, but her smile faded. The mask of Shadow Broker took over. "Yes, that was my intent, but I did not mean a word of it."

Ashley frowned, her apprehension returning like a knife to the gut. "Excuse me—what?"

"I lied to give them hope," Liara said without a blink. "Our state of affairs as it now stands does not call for much hope. They needed it, as you said, and I gave it to them."

Ashley crossed her arms. "When did you become such a cynic?"

"When I realized your Alliance admiral was capable of lying to his people."

The old Ashley, the one Liara remember from her early days on the Normandy stepped forward. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Shepard is alive."

Those three words stumped Ashley right out of her defensive posture. "What? How do you know that?"

"On the bridge. Joker showed me. Her signal is there, but it is weak."

" _What?"_ Ashley moved to sidestep her, but Liara placed two hands upon her shoulders and held her in place. "What are you doing? I need to verify this."

"No," Liara said, and her voice was forceful enough to stay Ashley's hurry. "I need you to trust me. Shepard _is_ alive. I knew this even before Joker showed me." She watched Ashley's frown turn to doubt. "Do not ask me how I knew. Just trust that I did. If you can, then you can trust what I am about to ask you."

Ashley stepped back and listened, but her arms returned to their crossed position. "And what's that?"

"You and I both know we are not going anywhere. I can pinpoint our location if that is what you ask of me, but we both know we are here for the duration. Whatever that may be. There is only one individual who can help Shepard right now, and that person is Miranda Lawson. Were it not for her efforts, none of us would be here today, because Shepard would have died on the operating table. Miranda was on Earth when the Normandy left the system. We have to contact her, inform her of Shepard's condition. She can get to the Citadel—"

Ashley interrupted with a shake of her head. "No. Admiral Hackett gave me a direct command—comm-silence. I can't break that."

"This is Shepard we are talking about. You owe her your life!"

" _Don't_ tell me what I owe!" Ashley took a step forward. "Shepard is every bit as important to me as she is to you. I know what she's given up for us."

"She has given nothing! She is still alive!"

Ashley back down, looked away. "And I believe you. _God, I believe you_." Turning away, she buried her face in her hands, rubbed at her forehead until she grabbed a wad of her hair and pulled. The anxiety was like a fire in her. "But it doesn't change things. I will not countermand the admiral's order."

" _Ashley—"_

"But I will make your request a part of my report."

"A part of your report? That is not good enough!"

When Ashley turned to her, she wore defeat as well as Liara wore the Shadow Broker. "It's all I have, Liara."

"Do you really think Admiral Hackett will stoop to begging an ex-Cerberus operative? Hackett has already proven where he stands on the matter when he lied to everyone about Shepard. You are a Specter! Act like one!"

"If I'm anything, I'm an Alliance officer first."

"This is not a request, Ash. This is a demand. Had I not waited to speak to you personally on this matter, you would have a mutiny on your hands. So, spare me your Alliance rhetoric. We must boost our signal _now_ in order to send a direct message to Miran—"

Two strong hands had her by the collar and against the wall before Liara could even think to react. Liara gasped, the wind knocked out of her.

" _You act like you're the only one who's lost someone!_ If we can't get off this planet and get back home, I never see my family again, my mother and my sisters." Ashley's voice broke and tears welled in her eyes. "God damn you, Liara T'Soni! This isn't all about you. I lost my father when I was a girl. I saw how war broke him, broke his spirit. I had missed the man he was before, but Shepard gave his spirit back to me. She became for me what I had lost in him. I loved her. I loved her like I loved my father. How dare you question my loyalty to Shepard, or God forbid, threaten my command with mutiny?"

Ashley shoved Liara hard against the wall, and balled her fist to land an angry blow, but in the end she backed away, ignoring the flaring blue aura that sprung around the asari's visage.

"You want to go over my head? I dare you, go ahead and try. Because you'll have to kill me to do it."

With her final words, Ashley stormed from the war room. Liara could not take a breath until the doors hissed shut behind her. When it did, her blue aura of biotic energy nearly exploded within the room. Only with the greatest of will could she subdue it long enough to leave the claustrophobic confines of the Normandy…

 **EEE**

 ** _I_** ndicating the shattered tree with a lift of her chin, Liara said to Jeff, "The rest you know…"

As her story unfolded, Joker leg's had done the opposite. He tried not to make a habit of sitting so low to the ground he'd have trouble getting to his feet on his own. Sure, everyone knew he had a debilitating disease that made life especially challenging (a challenge he'd been willing to take on without reserve), but he hated being in a position where he had to ask for help. In this case, he'd had no choice in the matter. Each part of Liara's tale had been like a blow to the back of the knee, collapsing first one leg and then the other until he found himself on the ground beside her. For a while, as he listened to her speak of Hackett's pronunciations of doom, he could hardly breathe.

"So…" The first word, as mundane as it was, was the hardest to speak. "…we're stuck here."

"I am afraid that is the sad truth." Liara sighed. "I am sorry, Jeff, to have to bring you such news."

"Think you could biotic punch that other tree just for me."

Liara would have laughed if not for the desolate expression on Jeff's face. The joke was sincere, but so was the request. Instead, she took his hand and held it in her own. All the crew of the Normandy had now was each other. Anything they had once held onto was now likely gone. Best to make sure of what they had and not waste sentiment.

"Had I the strength, Jeff, I would."

"Maybe we can come back later."

"Maybe."

Seconds passed as both of them tried to make sense of the situation. That was as difficult as making sense of life and its deadly twists and turns. Who could have foreseen how the future would play out? Five years ago, they were in the dark, going about their lives as meaningless as the smallest insect in a hive. Had they unearthed the information in the Mars archives earlier, had they taken to heart the warnings the past had given them, they would have been ready when the Reapers returned. They might have been able to work out the flaws in the Crucible's design. They might have taken the Reapers out before they even arrived.

What if…

Liara could conjure like magic tricks a ton of what-if scenarios. The problem with conjuring magic tricks was that they were not real, and never could be, just like her what-if scenarios. Life had played out just as it was meant to. They were stuck on this planet, and lightyears of time and space stood between her and Shepard, as it always had been. The truth was more devastating than anything magic could conjure.

Jeff's hand tightened over hears. "Do you think she had a choice?"

"Ashley holds all the cards," Liara answered with a huff.

Of course she did. _How could I have been so stupid?_ Liara chastised herself. Ashley was a friend. Their friendship had been forged in the battle against Saren, refined by difficulty, made stronger by time. She should have approached Ashley as friend. Instead, she let fear of losing Shepard forever make her wear the Shadow Broker persona. Would Ashley's response have been any different if she had? The Shadow Broker in her said probably not. The friend said maybe. Liara knew what she had to do to. The question was whether to remedy or repair the problem. She was prepared to ask Jeff for his opinion when he spoke before she could.

"I'm not talking about Ashley. I'm talking about Shepard."

Lost in her own thoughts, Liara had to think back on Jeff's question. Changing the subject from Ashley to Shepard brought his inquiry into a sharper focus, one that Liara had not considered. She was not only lost in her thoughts, but lost in her loss. Ashley was right. Her mind was so solely focused on Shepard dying on the Citadel, she kept forgetting that those around had already lost. Jeff was clearly thinking about EDI, and about Hackett's revelation that the Crucible's destructive power had focused on anything Reaper.

"Do you think Shepard had a choice?" Jeff reiterated.

Looking at Jeff, Liara saw the turmoil in his words reflected upon his face. The question held implications she just as soon not ponder. She did not know how to bring him solace in the face of such a thought, except to give back to him EDI's final answer.

"'We cannot win this war without sacrifice,'" she said, and watched meaning of it sink in. "I think Shepard had only one choice—destroy the Reapers. Did she know what doing so would entail? That I cannot answer, but I would like to think her final decision rested upon the hope that she was saving the lives of everyone in the galaxy."

Jeff squeezed her hand. "Thank you."

"I grieve for your loss, Jeff, but—"

"I know…we've got work to do, don't we? Shepard can't save herself. Not this time. Not if the best pilot in the galaxy has anything to say about it. Am I right?"

Liara smiled. "You are right. However, there is the matter of our new commander."

"Let me worry about Ashley. You just do whatever the hell you have to to contact Miranda."

"I never considered you one for mutiny, Jeff."

"It's not mutiny. Not by a long shot. It's more like a game of chess. We just have to know when to move our pieces. I say we start with the Knight."

Liara knew exactly who he was talking about, but she did not have the opportunity to acknowledge his suggestion. A sound met their ears, drawing their attention away from each other. Within the confines of the jungle around them, came a whisper, a rustle of bushes, the crack of a fallen branch, followed by an otherworldly call. Like the hoot of an owl with the growl of a beast.

"Did you hear that?" Liara whispered.

"Yes, and I'd rather not wait to find out if the Pirates of the Caribbean are here to eat the tourists."

"What?"

"Nothing. Let's get our dumb asses back in the Normandy."

"You are right."

Liara helped Jeff to his feet all while watching for any movement in the surrounding jungle. She saw nothing, heard nothing more. Thank the goddess for such small favors. Yet, it did not change their situation. They had crash landed upon an uncharted world within an uncharted system. Who knew what new lifeforms existed here, or whether they posed any threat. Scientist and archaeologist though she may be, at the moment, Liara was not in the least interested in finding out. Her focus had to remain with Shepard. Despite Ashley's threat, Liara would do whatever she had to ensure her safety.

* * *

 **A slight hint to a future MASS EFFECT story I want to write. So, what did you think? Reviews are welcome, desired, needed and pretty much being begged for. :D**


	17. All For ONE Part I

**Sorry for the long hiatus. This is the first chapter in an eight-part segment. I plan to post the others every couple of days. Enjoy!**

* * *

 _ **MASS EFFECT: ONE**_

* * *

 _"Amonkira, Lord of Hunters,_

 _grant that my hands be steady,_

 _my aim true,_

 _and my feet swift._

 _And should the worst come to pass..."_

 _~Thane Krios~_

* * *

 **All For ONE**

 _ **Part I**_

 **Before Endgame**

 _ **L**_ ight sputtered like dying stars.

Sparks flashed.

The floor grumbled and the Citadel groaned.

It was as if the entire station had become self-aware and was moving of its own accord. The effects were disorienting, making it difficult to determine up from down. One second, he'd been crouched, listening for movement, the next…

He was on his back, that much he knew, but the confines of the tight space had him second guessing his location. He'd tumbled when the Citadel lurched, and in this small space, he'd taken a beating. His muscles were bruised. A knot had even begun to form on the back of his head. What in the name of Arashu had happened?

Kolyat shook his head, trying to banish the dizziness in the dark, and forced himself to a sitting position. Pain bloomed in his chest. Likely a pulled muscle, but he ignored it. There were some things in life Father had time to teach him. Controlling the severity to which one experienced pain was one of them. It involved breathing and the refocusing of one's mind onto a set task. In this case, it was getting the council to safety. He'd been at the task of scouting, making sure their route was clear when all hell broke loose on the Citadel.

To steady himself in the darkness, Kolyat splayed his fingers and felt out on either side of him. His hands found the comforting walls of the tunnel. A grate ran beneath his booted feet and the top of his head met a low ceiling. He couldn't have tumbled very far from where he'd been.

One sense satisfied, Kolyat reached out with the other. He focused his thoughts, concentrating on what he could see, which wasn't much. His father could see well in the dark. It made his "work" easier, and more profitable. This was a skill set Kolyat had yet to master. He had no intention of becoming an assassin, not for the Hanar, not for anyone. Yet, now he wished he had taken the time to learn more from his father in his final days. The skills of an assassin might prove useful here. Thane Krios would have adapted well in this situation. Kolyat Krios was struggling.

His vision caught only fuzzy lines, blurred shapes, like a man whose vision had dimmed with old age. He struggled with the impulse to pound a fist against the wall. That was the old Kolyat, the angry Kolyat. He'd changed a lot since those days, found the peace his father sought to give him. Now, the old ways were begging to resurface. Just like the past, when he needed his father most, he wasn't there, and this time, it wasn't Thane's fault. Nor was it his own fault. It wasn't anyone's fault. He had no one to blame.

Except for that son of a bitch Leng. Shepard had taken the vengeance Kolyat felt he rightly deserved, but he could no more blame her for exacting her revenge than he could blame his father for dying. Shepard had as much love in her heart for him as Kolyat did. Her vengeance was fitting. Still, Kolyat wished he'd been the one to plunge the omni-blade deep in the bastard's heart.

 _Focus, Kolyat. Calm your emotions. Concentrate._

Kolyat listened to the voice of his father. He lived somewhere inside Kolyat's mind, always guiding him, always counseling him when he needed it. Kolyat breathed. He couldn't rely on his eyesight, so he pushed the sense away, closed his useless eyes, and focused on what he could hear…

A mumble of voices behind. Mouse. Conrad. They were close. Another sound. Yes, the incessant electronic beep of Keepie's backpack. Damn that impossible volus. The name had stuck. Even Chorban mistakenly used it from time to time. Ahead? The sound he'd heard before the Citadel turned upside down. Low moan. Scraping of nails upon metallic walls. Sensation of breath. Rancid. Breath of the dead. Something close.

 _What the eyes cannot see, the mind can sense._

Kolyat didn't think. Both hands shot out in the dark, found an inhuman shape, and twisted. A satisfying snap followed.

Just as a smile began to transform Kolyat's face (a smile one would have been happy the darkness obscured), a brightness flickered behind his eyelids. He opened them to find that light had returned to the tunnel. Not the entire length. Some lights were irrevocably burnt out from the jostling the Citadel gave them, but he had enough light to see what lay at his feet. A husk. It would seem Kolyat wasn't the only scout.

"Kolyat," came a whispered voice behind him.

Where there was one, there would be others. Kolyat sighed. They would need to move quickly.

"I am here, Mouse." Kolyat turned to see him appear around a bend in the tunnel. "Keep your voice down."

Mouse, crawling on all fours, froze at the sight of the husk at Kolyat's feet, but it was the man crawling behind him that spoke.

"Oh Jeez," Conrad said, his eyes growing wide.

"We are not alone."

Most of the mission had passed uneventfully. They'd traversed from tunnel to tunnel, following the keeper as it led them along at its unhurried pace toward the Council. Sore knees were the worst any of them suffered. This husk was the first sign of rougher times ahead.

"You okay, Kolyat?" Mouse asked.

"I am uninjured."

"Good," he said with more than his fair share of relief. If anything happened to Kolyat, he and the blonde would be in charge of defending the Council, and that didn't bode well for anyone. Mouse knew how to use a weapon, but he was no more proficient than Chorban.

"Is everyone else all right?"

"Yeah. What the hell just happened?"

"Unknown."

Conrad, still staring warily at the dead husk, said, "Felt like someone just drop kicked the Citadel."

"Yeah, and us along with it," Mouse added. "As if we don't have enough troubles."

Conrad continued to stare at the husk, but at least his mind was still in the game. "You think this could have affected the plan to jet the council off the Citadel?"

"Hard to say. Any news from the keeper?"

"Nothing yet," Mouse said. "Chorban's checking."

"Good."

Kolyat patted Mouse on the shoulder. _You're doing a good job,_ it said. Father used to pat Kolyat's shoulder as a child, as he must likely have done to Mouse when he was no more than a gutter rat, running errands and gathering information. He and Mouse were roughly the same age, and yet, for whatever reason, Mouse looked up to him. They were equal in almost every way and still, Mouse looked to him as if he were not Kolyat Krios, but Thane Krios. It unnerved Kolyat more than he cared to admit. He was not his father. He never would be.

Kolyat lifted a chin in the direction Mouse had come from. "Why don't you go and retrieve the scientists, Mouse? They should not have been left alone. Conrad and I will continue scouting."

Mouse nodded, and Kolyat saw dejection behind it. He wouldn't cater to it. He saw Mouse off with a gentle shove. The more Mouse saw Kolyat as different, maybe even a little harsher than his father, the better.

Conrad shuffled forward as Mouse moved back down the tunnel. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"Sending Mouse back?" Kolyat evidenced the sting of his decision with a consternate grimace.

"No, bringing me with you."

Kolyat sighed. "Conrad, you took on a Banshee. I think you can handle a few husks."

"Hey, look, I'm not the idiot everybody thinks I am, okay."

"No one thinks you're an idiot, Conrad. Least of all me."

Conrad accepted the apology, nodding tolerantly. "Okay, okay, I get it, but where there's one husk, there'll be more than just a few. When the husks start scenting out all the people down here, there'll be hundreds of them."

"I know. That's why we must hurry."

Kolyat moved to continue down the tunnel, but Conrad stopped him with a shake of his head.

"Let _me_ go get Chorban and Jahleed and Keepie. We work good together. I'm no soldier, and I sure as hell am no Commander Shepard. I'm a coward, Kolyat. I'll be useless to you."

More and more, Kolyat wished he'd been chosen to lead Commander Bailey's group toward the docks. At least among their company he could feel inferior, a lesser among greater warriors. He could look to them for advice, learn from them, instead of being the one upon whom others leaned. He was not that strong. He was merely the son of a great assassin; a son who'd felt unloved and unwanted for many years before he understood the truth. That life left scars that were hard to heal. Sometimes, those old wounds opened and festered. They manifested themselves in feelings of low self-worth, which, Kolyat realized, he was nursing right about now. Nor was he the only one. Conrad, too, suffered the same impediment. He wondered what events had taken place in Conrad's life to make him the person he had become. Maybe they had both suffered a similar fate. Maybe they had both grown up without a father in their lives.

Kolyat would have to play the strong one for a while longer, and he couldn't allow that to wear on him overmuch. He would have to keep his true self hidden, as Father often did. The assassin was not the Thane Krios Kolyat knew as a child. The assassin and the father had no dealings with one another. If they were going to get out of this, if they were going to accomplish their mission, Kolyat would have to do the same; separate the strong one from the inferior, the man from the boy. He could become his father for a while if it meant keeping the members of his team confident and ready for anything.

When Kolyat spoke, he spoke not in his own words, but in words his father might have used. "A coward, Conrad, runs the other way. You have not done so. You have saved lives. Where you see a coward, I see a hero."

Conrad looked at him with wide, disbelieving eyes. "Really?"

"Absolutely."

"Wow. That means a lot coming from the son of Thane Krios. Thank you."

"Save your thanks for someone who truly deserves it. If any of us make it out of this alive, it will be because of—"

"Commander Shepard. She'll do it. I know she will."

"Yes, she will," Kolyat said with a smile he didn't have to force. "But she is not here to help the Council, or us. We must do that, and after what we've just experienced, I have a feeling we don't have much time. Let's move, Conrad. The Council is depending upon us."

Conrad did something Kolyat did not expect. He saluted him and said "Yes, sir." Kolyat wasn't sure he particularly liked the swelling of pride it produced in his breast, but he knew that was just the sullen boy inside cringing. Maybe he did have what it took to lead this ragtag crew of feckless soldiers.

 **EEE**

 _ **W**_ ould have been nice if Bailey could have called the Presidium a "ghost town," but neither of them had been lucky in their endeavor so far. Why would anything change now? Better to call the Presidium "Zombieland," because that was all anyone was going to find up here. Zombies with claws and guns. He felt sorry for anybody who was unlucky enough to find themselves out in the open on the Presidium when the attack began. Those who didn't make it underground in time wouldn't have lasted long. It was a bloodbath out there.

Bailey settled his shoulders back against the partition he'd been peering around and mumbled a curse under his breath.

"What? What do you see?"

"We're never gonna make it to the Tower that way."

He didn't want to look at his asari companion when he said it. She was winded, getting tired, and for Aria T'Loak, that was saying something. He'd never known anyone as ruthlessly relentless as she. How many beat downs had she taken since this whole ordeal began? Her freedom, her ship, Bray…and still, she kept going, kept fighting. Now, bent on revenge, he wondered how long her sanity would hold out. He knew better than to think her reasons for chasing after the Illusive Man was solely for the betterment of the galaxy.

Bailey didn't bother flinching when Aria gripped his chest armor and pulled him out of her way. He only hissed when she brushed against the wound on his arm. Watching her, eyes wild as she peered around the partition to see the same thing he'd seen, Bailey shook his head. When was she ever going to learn to trust him?

She mumbled the same curse under her breath and turned back. "Shit."

Grimacing, Bailey held his wounded arm to his chest. He looked at the deep scratch marks in the crook of his arm that a husk had torn between the chink in his armor. It missed nicking an artery, thank God, but it had taken out a hell of a chunk of flesh. It was taking longer than normal to get better, even with medi-gel and bandages. He didn't want to think what that might mean. He'd been telling himself over the last hour that Aria had been scratched by a husk, right on the back. But then, she wasn't human.

"How's your arm?"

Concern? On the face of Aria? That was a new one.

"I'll live," he told her as she had told him forever ago when she'd been scratched. He indicated the sight around the corner with a lift of his chin. "Believe me now?"

"I didn't _not_ believe you, Owen." She sighed and looked away. "I just needed to see for myself."

"So, now what? That's the only way into the Tower."

"That can't be the only way. It's ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense."

"Minimizes security risks. Besides, it's the only way I know of and I'm head of C-Sec."

"Then, you're obviously out of the loop."

He couldn't argue that point. Everything that had happened since before the attack began was proof of it. His position within C-Sec, the way he'd gotten it, Aria's arrest, how the Council had tricked him into being party to it, all of it. He said once before that he was just a "glorified nursemaid" and that was the cleanest truth he'd ever spoken. Truth or not, it didn't make him feel better.

Bailey watched those deep blue eyes flit back and forth, thinking, figuring, planning. He didn't know a gifted race in the galaxy that could read minds, but if there were any, Bailey wished he were one of them. It would be nice to know what went on in that asari head of hers. He had to admit he found her attractive. His eyes had searched more than her facial expressions in the time they'd spent together, more than he cared to say. Hell, what red-blooded human male wouldn't have? Even now, beaten as she was, the essential Aria T'Loak, stripped of her queenhood and her dignity, Owen still found her sexy as hell. But she also scared the shit out of him. He had never met a more daunting woman in his life. He wouldn't have laid hands on Aria T'Loak in a sexual way even if someone paid him a million credits to do so. She reminded him too much of a praying mantis, almost insectile in her need for dominance. When he even slightly thought of what it might be like to kiss a woman like Aria, his mind could only see what happened to the male of the mantis species during mating.

 _I'll keep my head, thank you…both of them._

Just as he thought it, he caught her eyes and swore she'd gained the gift he so wished he had. Something bright flickered in them, some thought, some idea. Bailey knew better than to think it had anything to do with him. Aria had one thought—find the Illusive Man, and she wasn't going to give in until she had.

What he saw in her eyes was fleeting. Next thing he knew, she was lifting his elbow, extending his arm, examining the bandages covering his wound. Bailey felt like a fly trapped in a spider's web. Trouble was, he didn't know if the spider's name was Charlotte or Shelob. Her eyes caught his again, questioningly as though she wondered whether he really would "live." Bailey didn't like that look.

"What? Is it bad?"

"You'll live," she said absentmindedly.

That's when Bailey understood. She was thinking; thinking so hard, she didn't even know what she was doing. If she walked out in sight of all the Reaper troops blocking entrance to the Tower, tapping her forehead in deep thought, she wouldn't have known she was doing it. And here he was thinking she cared about his injuries. Ha! Pull up your big boy britches, Owen, and deal with it.

Still, he couldn't halt a little flare of anger. "Well, what the hell is going through your damn mind? You're as blank as a keeper."

The brightness flickered in her eyes again, but this time it didn't go away. Her jaw came slightly unhinged, and though Bailey still couldn't read minds, he saw the answer form on her face as surely as if they'd made a mental connection.

Keepers!

"Owen, you're a fucking genius."

"I try."

"Let's find one. Quick."

They went back inside the Citadel the way they came out onto the Presidium, through a broken doorway, one sliding door standing askew. They slipped through one at a time and moved cautiously back down the corridor they'd come through. They were back to the old game they had started since losing the Elbrus and Bray—weapon first, peering around corners, checking rooms for any sign of life (sentient or Reaper) and walking on eggshells. They were in the lion's den. If it heard them, the lion would make short work of its lunch.

They were twenty minutes in, searching another empty room, when Aria lost her patience. The temptation to pick up a computer console and toss it about the room was strong. "Where the hell are those goddamn things?" she said between clenched teeth. "On a smoke break?"

"Keep your voice down, Aria. Are you trying to get us killed?"

Aria was in his face before Bailey had time to react. "We don't have time to keep searching. The clock is ticking. Can't you feel it?"

"Yeah, I can feel it, damn you, but if you don't keep your voice down, we're gonna find more than a keeper." He indicated his arm. "We can't afford more injuries."

It was in a room like this one—random, like an office or a lab—when the last husk came out of nowhere. Neither of them had been expecting it. Like something right out of a horror movie. Bailey had thought it was the end, thought his heart would explode right out of his chest. He'd instinctively raised his arm to shield his face and the husk got hold of it, its talons sinking into the tender flesh between the bicep and forearm armor. Not willing to risk the sound of the shot, Aria had bashed its head in with the butt of her shotgun. She'd gone off on it like a wild woman and hadn't stopped until she unleashed all her rage out on it. By the time she'd finished, there wasn't anything left of the husk's head but bits of bone and mush. But it had seen them. They'd had to hide for a while, make sure they hadn't been pin-pointed. There was no way of knowing just how many of those things the Illusive Man had control over, or even if he knew they were coming.

Presently, Aria conceded to Bailey with a nod, but she still hissed at him. "I know."

Bailey pointed at her omni-tool. "Did Chorban say anything about being able to find one with that program?"

"No, just something about having one near."

"Send out feelers. Maybe one will come to us."

She impatiently shook her head. "It doesn't work like that. You have to be next to one or something." Frustration leaked into her tone. Aria took a deep breath and explained as one explains to a child. "You have to be able to capture the signals it's receiving in order to connect. That's what he said."

"So, we need to find one."

"Obviously, we need to find one."

It was Bailey's turn to think. He'd been living on this damn station most of his adult life. Keepers were everywhere. They turned up when you least expected them. They were like a fly on the wall. You didn't notice them unless they were buzzing in your ear. Like the time he walked out of the shower stark naked only to find a keeper in his bathroom fiddling with some panel behind the toilet. How the hell it had gotten in without him noticing or from where, Bailey didn't know, but it sure scared him half to death. He'd instinctively covered himself with a towel, cursed the critter until his cheeks burned, threatened to kick it in the ass, but it never once turned to look at him. It just went right on about its business as if Owen Bailey didn't exist. After that day, Bailey paid attention to their movements. Not so that he knew every single thing they did on every level of the station. Chorban and Jahleed knew much more than he on the subject of keepers. But he took note of the places they tended to hang out. The little runts creeped him out. Once the attack started, Bailey had forgotten all about the keepers. They'd gone back to being flies on the wall. Now, he needed to back track.

Tapping Aria's shoulder, he said, "Come on. I've got an idea."

"Great," she mumbled. "He has an idea."

Bailey peered out the door. Coast was clear. "Twenty minutes ago, I was a fucking genius."

"I exaggerate when I'm excited."

"Sound like my ex-wife," Bailey said with a huff. "The thrill is gone."

Aria laughed for the first time in…Bailey couldn't even remember, but it was good to hear.

 **EEE**

 _ **A**_ red circle.

Hundreds of years ago, they would have been plentiful. One couldn't have gone a block without seeing one of them. A red circle with a blue bar slapped across it and the word UNDERGROUND stamped over it in white. Even amidst the destruction, buried in the bleak landscape, Jack could make out lamp posts, street signs, the remnants of flickering advertisements, shop fronts; but nowhere did her eyes see a red circle.

She jumped over a low brick wall. Battered, bitter trees provided some protection from rooftop marauders and groundside cannibals, but the wall was better. They couldn't stay here long, though. Jack had landed next to Zaeed, who was crouched and busily popping off cannibals one by one. Their numbers were diminishing. So would the numbers of LET if they didn't get moving.

"Where to now?" Jack called to Pebbles over gunfire. Zaeed's rifle was particularly deafening.

A cry somewhere to her right. Jack turned in time to see a salarian go down, bullet to the chest. She returned the favor with a spray of bullets, pelting the head of a marauder who had poked its head out of a window. Glass shattered, mortar popped from the building like popcorn, but the marauder never reappeared. Got one!

She tossed a look over her shoulder and saw Prangley struggling to maintain the barrier she'd left him with. Moving at a low crouch around their commander, Jack strengthened the barrier on her end. She indicated the opposite end with a nod to Prangley. He acknowledged with another nod. That was one thing she appreciated about Prangley. He was adaptable. He knew how to change with the situation. Rodriguez not so much. She tended to panic; and yet, her absence had left a hole. They both felt it. The mission wasn't the same without her.

Jack turned her mind from the thought. She had to concentrate. Pebbles was speaking.

"We must continue on this road. Broadway, it's called. We should find entry into the station at its end."

" _Should?"_

"Nothing is for certain in this war, Jack."

 _Don't I know it,_ she thought.

An explosion of sound. Jack didn't have to turn to know there would be a fiery missile rocketing over her head. She followed its progression over the trees and into a chimneyed rooftop across the street. The ensuing explosion tossed several marauders head over heels from the roof. They hit the ground with a splat, quickly followed by gleeful krogan laughter.

"Gemme another one of those missiles, salarian," Grunt said behind her. "I like this weapon."

Zaeed was laughing with Grunt and popping cannibals with his own sort of glee when Samara and Jacob appeared over the wall, back within the protection of the barrier. Husks nearby were doing limp summersaults in their wake.

Samara, never one to mince words, announced, "There are brutes inbound. We need to move."

"How many?" Kirrahe said.

Excitement reflected in those huge eyes of his. Jack could scarcely believe it. Despite their losses, the old coot was enjoying the battle. Jack couldn't say that she wasn't enjoying it herself. It didn't lack the kick of a suicide mission, but there was an added element the Normandy mission lacked—the fate of the entire galaxy. On the Normandy, Jack could pretend it was just about them. Do or die. That hadn't changed here. The more uglies they dragged with them, the less eyes there were on Shepard. The importance of this mission had been kicked up to an entirely different level. Get it done, or _everyone_ will die.

"Hard to say," Jacob answered, breathing heavily. There was a scratch across his cheek. "Didn't have time to count."

Zaeed peered through his scope. "Too goddamn many, I say, even for Grunt."

"I heard that."

Another missile launched overhead, whistling through the air like a shuttle on a path toward a deadly crash landing. It cleared the trees nestled in the corner side park they'd taken refuge within and made a beeline for the edge of a building across the way. Just before the missile struck ground, Jack's keen eyes caught sight of a number of brutes coming up the cross street. Grunt's missile struck, tossing a couple of the hulking monsters like toys. Their bodies slammed into the sides of buildings, shattering glass, demolishing and crumbling eaves, but the explosion hardly made a dent in their numbers. The brutes were still coming.

"This way!" Pebbles called, pointing his troops down the road he'd called Broadway. "Look for the Underground."

Jack moved, calling on Prangley to help re-coordinate their position, keeping the barrier up as they retreated. Two close encounters with those things were more than enough for one night. She didn't have to wonder if the rest would fall in line. Zaeed's heavy breaths expelled behind her with every footfall. Jacob laid down a suppressing fire with his submachine gun behind them. Samara glowed neon blue in the corner of Jack's eyes. Grunt took up the rear, taking fire he could withstand, fire that could drop any one of them in a heartbeat.

They had the confusion of the explosion on their side. The brutes were regrouping. The cannibals, those few that were left, were in a daze. A blanket of gunfire blocked the marauders. The window for escape was open and they took it, blazing down Broadway, which no longer resembled its once grand name. The street was now a litter of debris difficult to traverse. New buildings, old buildings, all damaged, collapsed or unstable, but one old brick and mortar building remained that towered over the others in the vicinity. Sticking out from the eave of one of its entrances like a thumbs up was a circular sign. Within it, a red circle, a blue bar, and the word UNDERGROUND in white. A fluttering flag, caught in the raging winds of war, pronounced: _Visit the old London Underground._

On any other day that sign wouldn't have drawn Jack's attention any more than a sign pronouncing, _Shackles and restraints! On Sale Now!_ , would draw the attention of known criminals. Jack had never been much of a tourist. She wasn't a holiday seeker and she didn't sight-see. But today, the old London Underground never seemed more interesting.

"Hurry!" Pebbles stood on the edge of a side street, waving them forward, when a cacophonous scrape of metal on concrete caught everyone's attention.

The side street, littered with its own mess of debris, had just taken on a jumbled mass of hell that stopped them all in the tracks. That scraping metallic sound had been a downed shuttle tossed from one side of the street to the other. Five or six brutes had broken free of the main group and out maneuvered them, taken a shortcut. They poured onto the side street, small turian heads attached to massive krogan-like bodies, looking for their quarry. Finding the small group of seemingly inconsequential organic life wasn't going to prove much of a challenge. With a collective roar, they charged.

"Get down!" came an unmistakable krogan bark.

Jack felt a tug on both of her arms. One was Prangley, who had bravely remained at her side, providing barrier support at a run, which wasn't easy for any biotic. The other, Jack couldn't figure until after the missile sailed over their heads. The body that covered hers with a growl was instantly recognizable as Zaeed, but she hadn't the wherewithal to contemplate what the damn merc was up to. They would have been toast in a matter of seconds if she hadn't reacted. She shot her hand through the crook between Zaeed's neck shoulder. Prangley and their other two resident biotics threw in their support. Together the four of them raised a barrier just in time to watch the side street turn into one big orange glow.

The barrier didn't have the ability to mask the exploding missile's heat. Had she not known better, Jack would have sworn they were about to cook from the inside out. Debris of various deadly sizes pelted the barrier like raindrops all while Grunt laughed within their manufactured cocoon like a lunatic.

Jack had the presence of mind, as the explosion settled to a mild roar, to shove Zaeed from her. She tossed him a withering glare, but he ignored it and marched toward the krogan. "Grunt, what the hell are you doing? You could have gotten us all killed, you crazy ass krogan."

"It was just like that game you've been trying to teach me, Zaeed. With the ball and the pins. I got a Strike!"

The last of the debris had fallen. The big orange glow had dimmed to a crackle of flames. The smoke was beginning to clear, but a guttural growl came from within. A crunch of metal reached Jack's ears. Prangley helped her to her feet. The look on his face said he heard the same thing. She didn't know everything about the game of bowling, but she knew enough to know a strike is supposed to knock down all of the pins.

"That's not a strike, Grunt," she said, catching movement. Brutes appeared like shadows through the quickly dissipating smoke. "That's a spare!"

"Uh-ho."

Zaeed groaned. "For fuck's sake, Grunt!"

A shot rang overhead. More brutes were tearing through the hulking bodies of their fallen comrades, moving to charge once again. No one waited for the major's command to put their feet into motion. They ran for another block, past the ruined heaps of a red bricked building on one side and a seemingly untouched glass building on the other. The towering brick and mortar building that was the St. James Park station, still standing amidst a sea of destruction, loomed ahead. They were almost there!

Light artillery cracked off splinters of concrete at their feet. Jack tossed a shockwave behind her, tossing smaller enemies, but doing nothing to stop the advancement of brutes. Nor did it end the gunfire pelting the ground mere centimeters behind them. That wasn't a coincidence. The brutes and their weaponized compatriots weren't simply chasing them. They were pushing them right into an ambush.

Jack could smell it the way some people could smell fire, though the realization came too late to do anything but barrel headlong into it. Coming around the corner at the end of Broadway like an unstoppable freight train were more brutes than Jack cared to count. They had effectively cut them off, boxed them in. They wouldn't make the entrance to the station before the enemy did.

* * *

 **So, Kolyat makes his own debut in this story. I found writing his character interesting, and as close to writing Thane as I was ever going to get. I sometimes had trouble disassociating Thane from Kolyat, because he is one of my favorite male characters in the series, but I really do believe Kolyat stood on his own here. What do you think? Also, looking for any Londoners to please correct me if I've gotten anything wrong about your fair city. Please leave a review.**


	18. All For ONE Part II

**Thanks for the hits on the last chapter.**

* * *

 _ **MASS EFFECT: ONE**_

* * *

 _"Amonkira, Lord of Hunters,_

 _grant that my hands be steady,_

 _my aim true,_

 _and my feet swift._

 _And should the worst come to pass..."_

 _~Thane Krios~_

* * *

 **All For ONE**

 _ **Part II**_

 **Before Endgame**

 _ **S** :OSWALDVS, S:BEDA VENERABILIS, S:EDMVNDVS, S:WILFRIDVS, S:BENEDICTVS, S:CVTHBERTVS._

They were the names of saints, written in gold tiles above depictions of the saints themselves. Lit by a dim light, Luciana could see them on the ceiling above her. Saintly apparitions.

She had the presence of mind to grasp that the letters were written in Latin. _Abuelita_ used to read an old Latin Bible, bound in a tattered black leather, the letters BIBLIA SACRA VULGATA once embossed in gold filigree had rubbed clear with many years of use. Luciana couldn't remember much of what _Abuelita_ had taught her from that old Bible, but she did remember that the letter U in Latin was typically represented with a V. Thus, EDMVNDVS was Edmundus, CVTHBERTVS was Cuthbertus, and so on. _Abuelita_ used to say her worn Latin Bible had been handed down generation after generation for hundreds of years. She called it a family legacy. Luciana had always found it hard to believe. Still, she wished she'd had a chance to salvage it from Mateo. Hundreds of years of legacy had likely turned to dust on a dry moon out in the middle of nowhere. Their village was a ghost town now, and Luciana had never gone back. Too many bad memories.

"Luciana?"

The voice came from her left. Speaking of memories, one flooded hers of hearing a voice calling her upwards. She had taken the extended hand, hadn't she? She saw the soft, smiling face and the long, dark hair, but what had happened after that? Where was she?

The voice from her left called again, and something squeezed her hand. She felt fingers between her own. Luciana squeezed back.

"Luciana, talk to me."

A shuffle of light feet to her right and a familiar face hovered over hers. Ah, yes. It was all beginning to make sense now. The events of the last couple of hours were coming back. This wasn't Mateo; she was stuck in a different sort of hellhole, and the face staring down at her wasn't Abuelita's. Nor was it the other face—tatted and beautiful—that she most wanted to see. Though, this face was equally as comforting. It was familiar, and familiarity was good, especially when looking up at a salarian. His visage, typically slender with a brown gradient that began in a deep umber at his horns, then lightened downward toward his torso, was comforting, even with the red markings between his eyes. Jack liked to call him Baby Face, but she would never have done so to his face, and neither would Luciana.

Commander Rentola smiled down at her. "Ensign Rodriguez? How are you feeling?"

"Is she awake?" said the voice at her left.

The commander's smile widened and he nodded. "Yes. She's waking up."

Luciana tried to return his smile, but the attempt awakened something else—a sensation of numbness. She couldn't feel her face or the rest of her body for that matter. Only the pressure of the hand in hers registered with any feeling, so she squeezed back.

A gentle laughter. "Her grip is strong."

Rentola touched a hand to her forehead. "Try to speak if you can, Ensign. Tell me how you feel."

 _Deep breath,_ she told herself. _I can do this._ She took the steps one at a time: open mouth, breath in, use words. It felt like learning all over again. She never realized how many coordinated acts it took just to speak, and every single one of them hurt. From breathing to moving her lips, all of them took effort, and required emotion, which in turn required muscles. Pain bloomed in her mid-section, in her lower back.

"Be careful. Take your time. There's no rush."

Rentola's words had a soothing effect. The pain subsided as though it had gone behind a closed door. She breathed. She opened her mouth. She used her words.

"I'm alive…"

 **EEE**

 _ **M**_ any years ago, when she was just starting out, Aria had run with a group of no count smugglers and thieves. It was dirty work, didn't pay much, but it was a start. She was young and ambitious, and not interested in dancing or showing off her body to make a living unless it suited her purposes. She'd wanted to make money the old-fashioned way, with hard work.

The leader was turian. His name no longer mattered. It was his personality that stuck with Aria. He was ruthless, didn't care who he crushed to get what he wanted, and he wanted it all. She had learned a lot from him. She might have been young then, a baby in the eyes of a fellow asari, but she knew an opportunity when she saw it. A ruthless man appreciates ruthless actions, and Aria crushed anyone who stood between herself and the turian. She made sure she was not only his lover, but his right hand man. She climbed the ranks quickly within his two-bit operation. He thought he was the biggest badass in the galaxy, but Aria only saw him as another rung on the ladder. She had big plans for his operation that didn't include the turian at all.

She timed her coup around one of their big "jobs", as the turian like to call them. A red sand dealer owed him big time, and the turian intended to make him pay. They were to hit his factory hard, take as much as they could to sell on the black market, and blow the place, it and everyone in it.

But Aria had other plans. She'd already tipped off the red sand dealer. He knew they were coming and he knew what Aria wanted. They'd struck a deal. Help her take out the turian and secure her place as leader of his operation, and she'd wipe his debt clean. He'd agreed. The deal had been struck with a handshake. Hundreds of years later, and with a lot more experience under her belt, Omega's ruler would have known better than to trust a sneaky batarian, but this was young Aria, ambitious and eager to climb her way to the top.

She learned a very valuable lesson that day—trust no one.

The batarian figured it didn't make good business sense to remain under anyone's thumb, even if they promised to wipe his debt clean. Unlike Aria, he already knew the importance of trusting no one. Instead of waiting for another ruthless thief to turn the tables on him once the deal was done, he turned the tables on them.

Aria had entered the station (situated upon a nondescript moon in the middle of batarian space) along with the rest of the team, her heart beating wildly in her chest, ready to lead, ready to subdue this rabble of dirty misfits and turn them into something worth leading. And then it all went to hell. The red sand dealer planted no booby trap, nor did he appear upon an elevated catwalk to make his devious plans known before depressing a remote explosive device. Aria had been the first to notice the gauge. Attached to vats that chugged with who knew what substances, which blew steam at an alarming rate, the gauge was Aria's first brush with deception…and death. She knew the minute she saw it she'd been duped. The old time needle was hard over, buried deep in warning red.

It wasn't the last time Aria would survive an explosion. She had many other, more glorious survival tales to tell, but that had been the first, and she'd barely survived. No one else on her team had, not even the turian. When she got back to their base of operations, she found the red sand dealer had finished his work. He'd slaughtered every member of the ruthless turian's organization. He ensured that even if anyone lived, they wouldn't have an operation to run. The bastard had taken it all from her. Aria had given herself a week or two of recuperation and planning, but her revenge had been sweet.

Her second valuable lesson of the experience—always get revenge.

Ever since she laid eyes upon the Illusive Man at the dock, the old insatiable need had begun to creep back. For a time, the desire to survive, to get back to Omega, clouded her vengeance, but now that those two necessities were forever out of her grasp, Aria clung to the only thing that mattered. Kill the Illusive Man. She didn't know how she was going to do it, or even how to gain the mastery over whatever power he had gained, but she would kill him. Not for Bailey, not for the Council, not for Tevos, but for herself, for Omega…and for Bray.

But there was one problem—her body was warring with her. She kept seeing the image of that gauge needle buried in red. That was her now. She was weakening. The fighting, the crashing of the skycar, the explosion on the docks, the overuse of her biotics...it had all begun to take a toll. And the damn heels weren't helping! She knew she should rest, take a breather, eat, drink, maybe catch a few hours sleep if that were possible, but there was no time for that now. The gauge in her memory had also nudged into the red. She had to keep going.

Keeping up with Bailey, however, was becoming harder and harder to do.

They'd found a C-Sec station in the process of looking for a damned keeper (they were always in the way before; now they couldn't be found), and reloaded their weapons. Then, Bailey led them onward. Where he was going, Aria had no idea. She followed blindly. Somewhere in between the loss of everything important to her and now, she had ceased to be the leader. Hard to say when it happened, but she had become the follower, and she hadn't been a follower in decades. The realization made her feel worse than the corpses around her.

Down another corridor. Up a flight of stairs. Narrowly avoiding run-ins with husks and cannibals. It felt like they were going in circles. Eventually, Bailey led them near the Commons, in an area of luxury apartments. These were once the staterooms of dignitaries and ambassadors. Now they were tombs.

Bailey accessed the room of one such apartment, tapping his omni-tool for access, but waited until all was clear before entering. Aria slid in behind him. This one was small in comparison to her apartment in the Wards. A king-sized bed, a sitting area with a couch, and on one side a kitchenette. The bed might have been a tempting relief for her weary soul were it not for the singed and still smoking body that lay embedded like a striking meteorite into the mattress. He'd obviously come through the gaping hole in the bank of windows overlooking the Presidium. Aria couldn't tell what it used to be. It didn't matter anyway. Whatever it was, it was dead.

The oddly familiar sound of a refrigerator opening drew her attention. Baffled, she watched Bailey for a moment as he dug inside and moved things around. Then, he turned and gave an underhanded toss. "Here," she heard him say. Aria fumbled to grasp the bottle he'd flung at her. It fell to the floor. She cursed him. He grinned.

"What the hell is this?"

"It's an energy drink. We need it." He downed one himself. "Come on, we need to keep moving."

Aria grabbed Bailey's arm as he passed her for the open window, stopped him in midstride. She hadn't picked up the bottle yet. She didn't like this…this _coddling._ She wasn't a child. She didn't need to be taken care of. She needed to kill the Illusive Man. That was all.

"Where the hell are we going?"

"I'm looking for a comfy place to take a nap," he said. "Where do you think I'm going? We're looking for a keeper, remember?"

"You've been shuffling us around for the past ten minutes. We are going _nowhere_."

"Are you serious right now?"

"Where are we going?" she said, enunciating each word between clenched teeth, eyes lidded, voice low.

Bailey sighed, seeing the futility of arguing with a mad woman. He pointed upward. "There's a hub on an upper floor, full of keeper stations. We might get lucky and find one, but we'll need to go up. The lifts are not working and it would be suicide to just walk around in the Commons, Aria. You know that. The only way we're going to do that is to climb." He pointed to the broken window and the balcony beyond it.

"I could run to the Tower faster than that."

Bailey smirked. "Who are you kidding, Pirate Queen? You can hardly walk."

Her fist moved lightening fast to meet his hard cheek, but in her weakened state, Bailey was faster. He caught her fist, pushed it away from his face, but held it. If he'd have let her go, she would have gone to the floor.

He glared into her sneering face. "Don't hit me again." A threatening blue glow lit in her hand. Bailey caught sight of it out of the corner of his eye. "Go ahead. Sap yourself completely. Then, I'll carry your unconscious purple ass up to the next floor and record it all on my omni-tool. Everyone will know how I saved the leader of Omega."

"Go to hell."

"We're already here." He picked up her bottle, put into her hand. "Now, drink your damn drink and come on."

As she watched him walk toward the open window, Aria knew she could make a choice if she wanted to. Same as she had all those years ago between the red sand dealer and her turian gang leader. She could let Bailey go out the window to his own fate. She could find her own way into the Tower. She didn't need his help to get what she wanted. She was Aria T'Loak. She was Omega. She had been taking care of herself for longer than this self-important man had been alive. If she shot him in the back as he walked away, she'd be better off.

Consciously and intentionally, she felt the weight of the shotgun on her back, the pistol at her hip. Her fingers twitched to grip one or the other, but she wouldn't move them. Bailey stepped through the broken window onto the balcony, walked a few paces, turned, looked at her through shattered glass and waited. If she grabbed her pistol, took aim and shot, Owen would never see it coming. He was that trusting. He seemed to forget, she was still a ruthless asari commando.

Wasn't she?

Aria twisted the cap off the bottle, downed the energy drink in three or four swallows, and followed Bailey out the window.

A few agonizing minutes later, climbing from balcony to balcony (Bailey giving her a boost to the upper level and her reaching down to pull him up in return), she and Bailey found themselves on the next level. They gained access to another apartment, this one not as sanitized as the last. Something horrendous and bloody had happened here. They didn't look at it. They just moved through it and went back out into the upper level of the Commons.

Bailey took point, leading out of doors, around corners, assault rifle at the ready. They didn't speak. They just moved, quick and quiet. They delved deep into the Commons, far more out of the way than Aria would have liked, but she'd already made the decision to trust that Owen knew what he was talking about. She couldn't go back now, even though she knew that's not what the Aria before all this shit happened would have thought. That Aria liked to change her mind on a whim. It was easy for her to respect an individual one day and kill them the next. The luxury of free thought wasn't so luxurious here in hell, however. Her only free thought was one she didn't want to hear—that she needed Owen. They needed each other if they were to survive, if they were to stop the Illusive Man… _kill_ the Illusive Man.

They stopped at the end of a corridor, near an open doorway. Neon signs that still flashed advertisements to Presidium restaurants and services lit Bailey's cautious expression. Extranet consoles, buzzing with static and burps of information in a staccato language Aria couldn't understand, filled the corridor with sound, hopefully masking their auditory signature. Bailey peered cautiously around the edge of the doorway. When he turned back, he held up one finger.

Aria frowned and mouthed, _Keeper?_

Bailey nodded.

Aria didn't smile, but her face brightened. They were close. She moved to go around him, and Bailey pinned her to the wall with one swift arm. She didn't smile then either. Bailey raised his finger one more time.

His mouth moved. _Reaper._

Not that she hadn't begun to trust the human, but Aria needed to see. She pulled Bailey out of her way as she'd done a while ago and took her own look.

Another open corridor t-boned the one they occupied. Across the way, an open lounge with comfy chairs (everything about the Citadel was comfy, Aria mused), restful lighting for those who needed a break from work, or just a place to take a load off after wandering the Presidium for hours. It was tempting, for they had, but it wasn't the only draw. The room was more than a lounge. It was as Bailey had described it, a hub for keepers. Four of the creature's little consoles took up space in the lounge alone. Who knew what purpose they served. Recharging station? Sustenance? Communication? Data bank? Memory dump? The possibilities were endless. Aria only knew she needed to get in there.

One lone keeper stood in front of a station, completely oblivious not only to the two people who wanted to temporarily enslave it, but to the cannibal who seemed to be guarding it.

She and Owen had developed their own kind of short hand. A series of hand signals, nods, looks, and one knew what the other was thinking (…for the most part. She still hadn't truly figured the man out yet. In truth, Aria hadn't really figured out any human male. She understood them well enough to get what she needed out of them, and they were pretty easy to manipulate once they thought your only interest was in their smallest member.) In a few seconds, the two of them had a rudimentary plan.

Aria chanced one more look, saw the cannibal had its attention elsewhere, and slipped to the opposite side of the doorway. Bailey moved back into place, his eyes on hers. This was where Aria shined. She may not know her way around the Citadel to save either of their lives, but when it came to organizing a plan of attack, Bailey always looked to her. She suddenly felt important again, and hated the elation it gave her. Better to concentrate on killing, or their plan wouldn't flow as fluidly as a gangland hit.

 **EEE**

 _ **A**_ n hour go, he and Conrad had scouted far enough ahead to ascertain that what Kolyat feared was true. They were not alone. The husks were coming faster and more often. Whether Kolyat and his rabble of warriors gave themselves away by speaking or simply by their movements was hard to say, but Kolyat feared they were being hunted. The need to find the Council necessitated making short work of the lone husks that hit them at intervals. The time would come, however, when they would wish for one lone husk at a time.

That time would meet them sooner than Kolyat anticipated.

As Chorban and his keeper pet led them forward, pushing their troop deeper into the bowels of the Presidium, Kolyat kept his focus on determining from which direction the husks were coming. The obvious answer had not dawned on him as it might have his father. Thane had spent more time on the Citadel, knew its ins and out as only a great assassin would. He would have seen how the husk ambushes were increasing the deeper Keepie took them into the tunnels and closer to the Council. It should not have taken a short, rotund alien, which most other species considered dim-witted, to catch what the son of an assassin should have caught.

Jahleed cleared his throat, before breeching the seemingly untouchable subject. "Are you sure we're not closing in on the husks, as opposed to them closing in on us?"

Kolyat went still, considering the idea, knowing the volus was right and pretending it didn't bother him that he hadn't seen it. "You are probably right, Jahleed," he said, though it stung. "Keep alert everyone. The keeper may be inadvertently leading us to greater danger."

At least he got that right. The farther they delved, the closer to the Council they drew, the greater the danger. Air circulation decreased, and with it the stench of fire. Kolyat and his troops found themselves enveloped in a dusky smoke. Evidenced by the soot lining the walls of the tunnel, it had been thicker, but it had thinned enough for the air to be breathable. Still, it was best to err on the side of caution.

Kolyat turned a halting hand to the salarian and his sidekick. "Chorban, Jahleed, it's probably best if the two of you remain here with the keeper. The three of us will scout ahead for any obstacles."

Jahleed shook his head. "If there were obstacles, Keepie would tell us."

"That is true," Chorban said. "I've programmed _the keeper_ to reroute us past potential hazards."

Conrad huffed. "Well, it isn't doing a very good job with all the husks, now is it?"

"A keeper isn't capable of predicting the movements of our enemies, Verner," Chorban said with narrowed eyes. "But it can communicate with the Citadel and relay any hazards that might be in our way."

"I'd call a husk a hazard," Conrad mumbled.

Chorban shook his head and directed his next words to their leader. Sometimes he wondered why he saved that human's life. "The point is, Kolyat," Chorban said, "if the keeper is moving us toward the smoke, then there is a reason for it. The Council must be very close. _They_ could be the ones in danger."

Kolyat nodded, accepting the salarian's counsel. "Then, we must all move quickly."

Decision made, Chorban commanded the keeper to continue onward. They followed its infuriatingly slow progression, Kolyat to one side of it and Conrad on the other, weaving from tunnel to tunnel. The husk attacks didn't stop. Like deadly shadows, they came at them through the smoke. Kolyat left the fighting of them to his two wingmen, Conrad and Mouse. The husks hissing approach made them easy target practice. When the fight stepped up, he wanted them to be ready. But their readiness wasn't Kolyat's only worry. If he didn't know any better, he would have thought the husk attacks were meant, not to maim or kill, but to slow them down. As much as he wanted to, he couldn't dwell on uncertain facts. The smoke had thickened. They had come to a t-junction and the keeper was turning into it.

Shining a light over the keeper's shoulder, Kolyat's dark eyes barely made out a reflection of metal. The tunnel was coming to an end, but they had to cover a bit more ground to see why. At the end of the alcove were the rungs of a ladder and an open hatch below it. Black smoke billowed from within.

The keeper came to a stop.

"That's it," Chorban called from behind. "Keepie can go—I mean, _the keeper_ can go no further. The Council must be down there."

Negative thoughts swarmed Kolyat. The smoke had already begun to make breathing a struggle. He wasn't the only one affected. Each of them, besides Jahleed and the keeper, were coughing and rubbing their eyes. They no doubt feared suffocating, but one thought kept running through Kolyat's mind that they would never have to face—Kepler's Syndrome. Smoke was not a factor in the disease. It was humidity, moisture, and Kolyat knew this, nor was he sick as his father had been, but fear had an ugly way of twisting knowledge, turning its language foreign until one didn't know truth from fiction. There was still much to learn of Kepler's Syndrome. The sickness could lay dormant in every drell for all Kolyat knew. Smoke could only exacerbate it.

 _Pessimism, Kolyat, is more deadly than any sickness. It will take your life if you allow it._

Ahead was smoke, maybe suffocation, but so was the Council, and if he was suffering, their suffering must be greater. Whether he kept going or he turned back, the mission wouldn't change. It would just take longer to complete.

"Conrad, Mouse, come with me. The rest of you, stay here."

Chorban wasn't likely to protest this round. There was nothing else the scientists could do at this point. Chorban called the keeper back and the three of them continued on. They hadn't much farther to go. The rungs of the ladder gleamed in Kolyat's bright light, but so did a pair of black hands and above that, a desiccated face devoid of soul with two bright blue points of light for eyes. Husk. Kolyat didn't hesitate. A bullet met one of those eyes, obliterated it and splattered whatever used to be brain tissue onto the wall of the tunnel. It's head kicked back, lolled there for several seconds while its body caught up to the fact that it was dead. Gravity took over and pulled the husk back down into the opening. A sickening thud met them from somewhere below.

Mouse muttered a curse. "They're coming from down there, aren't they?"

Kolyat slid to the opening on his belly, ignoring the black, viscous substance dripping down the wall. "Hurry. Take my feet." He didn't wait for them. If they hadn't caught hold of him in time, he would had fallen head first through the opening and landed just as sickeningly upon the ground below. Instead, he descended husk-like, upside down, to peer into the tunnel below. The scene below him, however, was far different from what his mind perceived.

This wasn't a tunnel, but an artificial metallic grotto. Kolyat's dark eyes took several seconds to decipher the scene before him. The walls were rounded, designed to accommodate the passage of a vessel of some sort, and in the thickening smoke, Kolyat saw it—a tubular pod, dislodged from a set of tracks and wedged perpendicularly in the passage. The pod's bullet-like hull smoked from a gash in its side, and its nose was crumpled beyond recognition. The keeper had led them true. This wasn't just any passage. This was an escape tunnel direct from the top of the Tower; it's most likely path being the docks, where they could make good their escape.

First glance said the nose had broken through a sidewall. It should have ended the mystery of the husks, for it was from that hole they poured like blood from a wound. A second glance said something far more sinister had happened. The sidewall hadn't been broken though, but pried apart by something monstrous. Whatever it was brought the escape pod to a devastating end. The gods only knew how long it had sat there crawling with husks. Several of them were attempting to claw their way through the hull by way of the smoking gash. Flames licking up its side didn't deter them, either. Nor did the pop of gunfire. The sound drew them like children to a confectioner's shop. Someone was still alive inside.

Kolyat pulled himself up with the help of Conrad and Mouse.

"What did you see?" Conrad asked as soon as Kolyat had returned topside. This wasn't going to be an easy tale. The three of them were about to put their lives on the line for people they hardly knew. Thus was the price of war.

 **EEE**

 _ **C**_ ool water slipped between her lips for the third time since her eyes had opened, since Luciana became fully aware of her surroundings. They were inside a cathedral as grand as some of the caverns she used to explore on Mateo. Even her exhalations echoed. Ostentatious though it might be, the cathedral could not top that of nature. There were more precious metals inside those caverns than this house of worship could ever hope to hold. If diamonds as glorious in splendor as that of stars held the same worth as they had in times past, Luciana could have made herself a rich woman a long time ago, but eezo had replaced precious metals in worth.

Didn't matter anyway. Eezo was about to become as worthless as dirt. It was just a matter of time. In the next cycle, a new species would evolve (maybe varen) and they would discover some other means of currency.

The scratching had returned. A low moan issued just on the other side of the high window that started her heart and tensed her muscles, and in turn increased the pain in her abdomen. It was getting better. The medi-gel had done its job, but it wasn't completely healed. That was going to take more time than this war would allow.

Above her, Commander Rentola held a slender finger to his lips. His big eyes went from her to the window above them. Black palms and the balls of feet whispered over the glass. Then, they were gone.

"Husks," he whispered. "Go silent as death when they pass. They are searching for a way in."

"What if they do?" It wasn't the first time she had spoken, but it sure felt that way. Her throat was as dry as the desert on Mateo. Nothing seemed to quench her thirst. She'd tried to tell herself it was her body's reaction to trauma, but in the back of her mind, she knew what it was. She was scared to death.

"They won't. The cathedral is well shielded," Rentola reassured with a pat on her shoulder, but Luciana was no longer listening to him. A hand had squeezed hers, and when she turned to look into those blue eyes, she didn't see such brave assurance.

Luciana had regained full consciousness, not only to realize that she wasn't on her way to the big Grissom Academy in the sky (if there even was such a place), but that the mission had continued on without her. Since the start of this damn war, she'd been by Jack and Prangley's side. They had become a tight knit family, closer than they'd ever been inside the Academy. To suddenly be separated from them hurt worse than being shot. If she'd only had the contingent of salarian protectors the major left behind, Luciana didn't think she would have dealt well with the guilt of feeling as if she'd let her family down. But _he_ had been there for her.

While she was attempting to save his life, she'd only thought of him as _the Alliance soldier_ or _the paladin._ Rentola called him Colonel Hicox. He referred to himself only as Jasper, perhaps to take away the stigma of the title. (It had shocked her to learn she'd almost given her life to save a high-ranking officer. They gave out medals for doing things like that. She probably wasn't getting one anyway at the rate this war was going, but Luciana didn't think she wanted one. She didn't feel very brave.) Even in his guarded condition—much better than he was when she found him, but still not in any position to fight, let alone command—he kept himself at her level in everything he did and said. He never pulled rank or made her feel inferior, which would have been difficult to do for a man in his position. What she most appreciated was his honesty. Where Rentola told her only what he thought she should know, what he thought she would want to hear, Jasper spoke the truth.

Rentola had left the baptistry to confer with those of his remaining troops. As he went, Jasper raised a chin to the departing commander, his voice low from pain and the need to keep quiet. "He's not bad for a salarian. I got the impression from Major Kirrahe that he's highly respected. But you should know, Luciana, Rentola is just playing nice."

She had come to take his position on the floor at her side as part of her current existence, but more than that was the constant presence of their linked hands. In the first hour, she had thought it odd that he would not let her go, but she'd since grown accustomed to it, decided she needed it. They were the invalids, the two most useless souls in the room, and when silence reigned as husks scratched for entrance, their linked hands was their communication source. Kind of the way she and Prangley communicated with nothing more than a look. It was in those moments, she knew she had made the right choice in saving Jasper's life, even if the consequence had meant getting left behind as Jack continued on with the mission.

"What do you mean?" she whispered, glancing once at Rentola.

At first, Jasper turned his gaze to the gilded ceiling and the saints staring down upon them. He seemed unsure of how best to form his words, which worried her. The moments between husks, when Jasper could actually speak to her, Luciana found herself dependent upon his military wisdom. She knew he would not lie to her or try to comfort her with words when what she needed to hear was the truth, but it would seem truth and wisdom were not so easy to impart when there was no uncomplicated way to say it.

He looked back at her, his gaze direct. "How strong are you? If you had to get up and take action, do you think you could do it?"

Luciana touched her abdomen. The blood there had dried to a sticky residue, but she had already felt underneath her clothes. The open wound had closed thanks to the medi-gel. "I still feel pain. Why? Why are you asking me that?"

"The cathedral _is_ shielded. Very well, in fact. It's the reason we chose to shelter within it when we were attacked at Victoria Station, but no shielding is foolproof. We knew we couldn't stay here forever." The look in his eyes was almost apologetic. "They will get in…eventually. They'll find the power source, they'll destroy it, and they'll get in. Husks are far more intelligent than people give them credit for. They used to be just like you or I once. _When_ they get in, you must be ready, Luciana."

She knew what he was saying, knew why it took him time to find the right words, but it didn't make it any easier to hear. "I didn't save your life just to let you be torn apart by—"

The scratching noise came again, saying the word for her. Silence again reigned as husks passed overhead, moaning and searching, Jasper's words "they will get in" taking on the tone of a premonition. The husks hovered for a bit, listening, scenting, and then they moved on.

"I'm not going to leave you here."

"You must. If something happened to you…" He stopped, frowned, looked away again, making Luciana wonder as to the intent of his thoughts, and then an odd smile sprang upon his face that didn't fit with their dire situation. "Well, let's just say I'd rather face a horde of husks than Jack."

Luciana smiled back, though half-heartedly. The idea of him facing a horde of husks in his condition made her sick. "Jack's a badass, but she's a softie at heart. Don't let her fool you."

"She cares about you, Luciana," he said. His smile had slipped. "And I promised. My life before yours. That's why you need to gain your strength. Try to sit up if you can."

"That's going to hurt."

"Yes, it's going to hurt, but it's better to hurt trying to stay alive than hurt while you're dying. Trust me on that."

She did trust him. She trusted him more than anybody else in the room and she hardly knew him. He'd nearly given his life to save others; she'd nearly given her life to save his. The least she could do was listen to him, but she couldn't look him in the eye and agree to leave him behind just to save her own ass. That went beyond everything she believed. If she believed that when she found him dying inside the choir school, he'd be dead right now.

"Take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and as you do so, pull yourself up."

"Okay, I'll try."

Luciana didn't try. She did it. The pain was severe enough to dot her vision with black spots, making her teeter like a kid on a seesaw. Horrid visions of falling over onto Jasper's torso made her let go of his hand and steady her palms on the cool floor, but it still felt as if her guts had come unzipped. She shook the uneasy thoughts away and examined herself. Still whole. Jasper's hand was now at her back, supporting her. Everything was good.

"If you feel like you're about to pass out, lay back down. We'll try again in a minute."

"No, I'm good," she said, her breath coming in staccato pulls, but her lungs were chugging along just as they should. She was still alive. "It hurt like hell, but it's passing now."

"You did well, Luciana."

She wanted to show strength for him, to show the colonel that she was okay and that she could do what he asked of her, like a good soldier, but when she looked back, Jasper's eyes weren't on her. They were on her back, and his hand upon it. What she saw in Jasper was regret, heavy and utterly lonesome. She saw not a soldier, but a man who was beginning to realize that his death was imminent, that all his hopes, all his plans for the future were about to go up in smoke. That's when Luciana understood his plan, saw the handheld explosive devices strapped to his belt. He had no intention of being torn apart by husks. He would take them with him when they came.

When Jasper turned his hollow eyes to her, and just as quickly fought to hide his despair with an air of approval, Luciana decided in that second she would get strong. She would build herself up, no matter what it took, but she wouldn't do it just to save herself. She would do it to save them both.

 **EEE**

 _ **J**_ ack had reoccurring dreams—the worst kind—of running. Running to what, or from what, she could not remember, but she could never go fast enough. No matter how hard she planted her feet on the ground, or strained her legs muscles to move herself forward, she never gained any momentum. She remained perpetually stuck on a slow motion road to nowhere. It was an uneasy feeling that stayed with her long after she woke. She hadn't had the dream in a long time. Not since Shepard. Not since they'd defeated the Collectors. And that was a good thing.

The waking world, however, wanted to show her that sometimes dreams could become reality. She was running, harder and faster than she'd ever run in her life. It was like the scene on the Chelsea Bridge all over again. Only this time she didn't have one brute gunning for her, but a handful of them. One foot in front the other, leg muscles strained to the max, but she couldn't seem to gain any headway. The brutes were gaining and the entrance to the St. James Park Station was still half a block away. Miranda wasn't likely to appear just in the nick of time, nor would the road collapse behind them, taking the brutes and their ugly cohorts with it. This would take another sort of ingenuity—the Subject Zero kind.

Jack didn't like dwelling on the past. The past sucked in a special kind of way. Hard to put a good descriptive word to just how much the past sucked. She didn't forget it, though, didn't tuck it on the shelves of her memory and let it gather dust. Bringing it back from time to time served a purpose, brought up old feelings, old hate, old anger like a spewing volcano.

So, Jack let the memories come, let them wrench her and twist her hate like it had in the old days—Purgatory, Blue Suns' prison ship, guards and prisoners surrounding her, lurid faces, reaching hands, ugly intentions. She'd let them have what they wanted, let them take it after every last ounce of fight in her had been exhausted. It wasn't the first time, but it sure as hell had been the last. Subject Zero was not one to fuck with, and once she'd healed, she'd made sure each and every one who partook knew it. She crushed some, gutted others, and to the more brutal of her attackers, she returned to them in kind before she killed them. There was a shortage of broomsticks on board the prison ship after that day.

Jack's bloody revenge did not go unpunished, however. Hyped on hate, intoxicated with rage, Jack had been forcibly incarcerated in cryostasis. Shepard had no way of knowing Jack's state of mind when she released her, but Jack did. She could remember every second of waking, frozen to the bone, and feeling her mind reconnect to the hatred that waited for her like a faithful friend. Even the cold held no sway over it. Hate did not bend at the obstacle of restraints on her arms and neck, nor did it stand aside when three towering mechs, as big and as bold as brutes, reared up to block her escape.

Grunt told her one time that the first time he saw her, his first thought was, "Jack is small." There wasn't a lot of respect in his comment until he saw her in action. Small could pack a hell of a punch if given the right motivation, and that day inside the Blue Suns' prison ship, Jack had plenty motivation. Three mechs were nothing in comparison to the biotic wrath that erupted from within.

It was a potent memory, laced with all the right ingredients, both physically and mentally. A confined space, high walls on either side, and more than one hulking monster barring her escape. Subject Zero was trapped, caught, cornered. When that happened, nothing, mech or brute, could stop the shitstorm about to ensue.

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	19. All For ONE Part III

**Thanks to my readers, I'm nearing the 3000 mark in views on this story. Hope you're enjoying it. :)**

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 _ **MASS EFFECT: ONE**_

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 _"Amonkira, Lord of Hunters,_

 _grant that my hands be steady,_

 _my aim true,_

 _and my feet swift._

 _And should the worst come to pass..."_

 _~Thane Krios~_

* * *

 **All For ONE**

 _ **Part III**_

 **Before Endgame**

 _ **K**_ olyat landed at a crouch, knees bent, legs taking the brunt of the impact. His hands steadied him. He could have rolled, giving the impact momentum and lessening the strain on his body, but he wanted the element of surprise on his side. Husks were mostly mindless instruments of destruction, arrows flung at an enemy in great numbers to quell their advance. They were swift and could be devastating, but faced with an unexpected attack, they could not be trusted to plan an opposing strategy. Kolyat had more than surprise on his side. He also had the training of his father.

He had precious few seconds before he made his move. When he did, the husks would be on him. Kolyat knew the risks. He might not make it out of this unscathed, much less alive. In those few seconds, vivid memories played like vids in his mind. Memories of the desert, of his father, of training under the hot Sol star. Much of their final time together in the dry climate of Earth's New Mexico, they had spent in training. It was not something either of them spoke of to anyone else. If his father had mentioned it to anyone, he would have given the details only to Commander Shepard.

It wasn't how either of them wanted to spend the final months of his father's life, but Thane Krios hadn't gained the status of legend in his particular field by lacking perception. He saw how the climate of the galaxy was changing. Finding an arid environment to prolong what time he still had to be with his son, had only been part of the reason for their "vacation."

"My time in this failing galaxy has come, Kolyat," he had said. "But yours is just beginning. You need to be ready. The time will come when all that stands between death and everything you hold dear, is yourself." His father's hand had landed upon his shoulder like a knight's sword in the ancient tales of Earth legend. Like the kings of lore, he placed the banner of power over him, handed Kolyat his crown and mantle, and said, "Let me teach you what I know."

He hadn't wanted it, but he took it. Not for any sentimental reasons. Not because it was what his father wanted, but because his powers of perception were as well tuned. The war with the Reapers was not going well. Entire systems were falling. Untold billions had died, or had been mutated to suit the will of the Reapers. Kolyat knew he had no choice but to accept the training. Sitting in a monastery on Kahje and chanting prayers would not save the people in this cycle, not if Shepard's tales were to be believed. He could doubt her no more than he could the words of his father.

His final memory, before raising his eyes to the sight of more than a dozen husks crawling over the escape pod and trying to rip their way in through the gaping hole, was of his father attempting to teach him the art of stealth. They had stood under the hot sun, in an open area of land the locals called "chaparral," both of them bare to the waist, soaking up the ultraviolet rays. All around them lay a dense thicket of shrubs and dwarf trees as they played a game of "hide and seek." Kolyat had never been as proficient in hiding in plain sight as had Thane, and his father found him often (though Kolyat never saw _him_ until it was too late), but on one particular round, his father never appeared and Kolyat wouldn't have found him either had an attack of Kepral's Syndrome not overcome him. He found his father amidst a thicket of bushes and stubby, protruding rocks, unconscious and bleeding from a head wound. Training ended that day and Kolyat took his father to the Citadel for his final care.

Drell have excellent memories. They never forget anything. Some saw it as a gift, others a curse. Kolyat had yet to determine what it was to him, but he was glad to have the memories of his father. Thane Krios had instilled in him a certain way of living he would never be without: remove what's ugly from your life, but leave in your wake more good than bad. That's exactly what Kolyat intended to do, however short his life might be.

Strong legs propelled him. Swift hands gave him momentum. A calm mind steadied him. They would not see him coming.

 **EEE**

 _ **T**_ here was a time, not so long ago, when Conrad would have been shaking in his boots. He would have hidden behind Chorban, Jahleed and Keepie, while Mouse and Kolyat went forward to save the day. He was still shaking in his boots, but he couldn't let the two men risk their lives alone. He couldn't rely on his "coward" status, and he couldn't rely on his fantasy world anymore. He had to be what he did not think he could be. Brave.

Conrad relied on what he knew—the last hour had proven that he wasn't too bad a shot, that husks were easy targets at a distance, and that even after all the hell he'd been through, he was still a swift thinker.

Ignoring the burning smoke in his lungs, he'd followed Kolyat down the hatch and into the open passage below. He knew what he would see. The escape pod. The fire. The husks. It was all there, just as Kolyat described. Yet, it still froze him in place. Swift thinker or not, terror took him, seized his heart the way a banshee seized its prey. Mentally, he was standing on the top step of a stairway, watching as the descending steps collapsed in on themselves, becoming one long downhill slide toward the door of his safe room. He didn't want to slide down a chute of fear that could cost not only his own life, but the lives of his comrades. He didn't want to be a coward anymore.

Conrad clawed his way back, dug in his nails, ripped them to the quick, drew blood. He came back the second Mouse landed beside him. He felt the impact of his feet like one quick slap to the face. WHOP! And he returned to reality in time to see Kolyat on the move, light feet propelling him like a noiseless locomotive toward the fray of husks. Momentum helped the drell scale the sidewall toward the vehicle he called an "escape pod," but it was sheer skill that snapped the neck of a husk with one hand (and at an inverted angle, at that), and blowing out the brains of another intent upon getting into the pod.

Kolyat had lithely gained the top of the pod, his landing and his weapon dispersing the husks that had gained headway over those shielded inside. Now, they were advancing again, and those on the periphery were slowly but surely taking notice of the two lesser-trained individuals who had breached their numbers.

Mouse muttered a curse when the first of the husks turned their way and hissed at their intrusion. Conrad felt it too. His legs became like bags of water. He wasn't made for this. He wasn't a soldier, and he wasn't ready to die like one either. It was Kolyat, pistol in one hand, standing atop the pod with no other weapons but the ones he was born with that moved Conrad into action.

The drell's foot met an inhuman face in one flying roundhouse kick. Bones broke. A bullet obliterated matter and tissue. A hiss at his ear. Knees bent. Body keened backward. The back of his head met a husk's nose, knocking the creature off the pod. Another shot as he righted himself. Elbow to the face of one husk, foot to the gut of another. One more tossed over his shoulder cleared a path, but they kept coming. Kolyat could not hold them off forever.

Conrad knew what he had to do.

Hands shaky like a boy on his first date, he pumped his shotgun and pointed to the gap in the wall. "Mouse, take out whatever comes through that opening."

Wide-eyed, Mouse looked between him and his target. "What are you gonna do?"

 _I'm about to get myself killed._

He didn't say it, but it was the first thing that went through his mind when he stared down the sight at the approaching husk and pulled the trigger. The blast was like an explosion in the confined space and its head went off just the same. The sound spurred him, jolted him forward, not backward. Conrad kept going forward, barely hearing the pop-pop-pop of an assault rifle behind him. His weapon was one that only worked exceptionally well up close and personal. It turned husk heads into mush, and for those who escaped the barrage of pellets to the head, he used the butt end as a club, splitting their heads like overripe melons. Conrad felt untouchable, invincible, but that feeling wouldn't last for long.

 **EEE**

 _ **N**_ umb. Kolyat could feel nothing. Not the beating his fist was taking, not the scratches that had gouged through his jacket to penetrate the thick skin of his back, not the strain of leg muscles. He had repressed everything but the task that surrounded him. Husk faces glowered and encircled from all sides. They came at him without thought or concern for their own safety, numb to pain, numb to fear as Kolyat himself, devoid of the human emotions they once had. They were not capable of rational feeling. They knew only that they must kill at whatever cost to themselves. Kolyat was not so unfeeling, but if death was what they sought, then he would oblige them.

One bounded up from the base of the pod, leaping like a varen after a quick meal. Kolyat dodged his upper body out of the way, letting the husk sweep past him and impact the curved ceiling. He shot it before it hit the ground. Another landed with all fours onto his back. Teeth threatened to sink through his high collar and into his neck before he swung forward, taking it with him, smashing its torso onto the top of the pod. Ragged pieces of metal from the gash in the pod pierced through the husk's back and protruded from its biomechanical chest. A flurry of electricity in its wretched body. It shuddered, and then it died, effectively sealing the gap in the pod. Whoever was still alive was safe for the moment.

Only then did Kolyat register the small reverberating explosions. What few husks remained to fight were drawn to the sound, crawling toward the bearer from all visible sides of the passage. Kolyat could ignore the ones that still attempted to gain entrance through the ever-closing breach in the sidewall. Mouse's efforts to seal it with bodies was paying off, but Conrad's efforts were not. His weapon could not keep up with the onslaught. For every one he killed two more took its place, tightening around Conrad like a noose.

One dropped like a spider onto Conrad's back. He screamed, shotgun going off at random, tearing a husk in half. Another jumped him from the side.

Weapon blazing, Kolyat took a running leap.

 **EEE**

 _ **C**_ losing in. The bastards were closing in.

BOOM!

One down, too many more to go. Glowing blue eyes in front. Scratching, hissing behind. Getting closer. He wasn't going to make it.

But maybe that was okay. When Shepard saved the galaxy and everyone was safe and the Reapers were all gone, she would learn of his sacrifice to save the Council. She would know that his heart really had been in the right place all along, not just stuck up in the clouds with his overinflated head. Commander Shepard would honor his sacrifice as that of a soldier.

 _Hey, maybe she'll put my name on that board in the Normandy!_

Conrad pulled the trigger—BOOM!—just as a weight came down on his back. A stinging pain dug into his shoulder. Hot liquid splattered him. He screamed. Another weight hit from the left, staggering him. He was going down. They were going to rip him to pieces. He prayed it would be quick as it had not been for Jenna, that Kolyat would shoot him before he could—

 _Pop, pop, pop!_ Something struck Conrad like a sledgehammer.

 **EEE**

 _ **T**_ he full weight of Kolyat's body struck Conrad broadside. The husk on his back went flying. The other, pinned beneath Conrad, hissed and tasted the barrel of Kolyat's pistol just before he pulled the trigger. The sound, which was right at Conrad's ear, probably deafened him, but at least he was alive. Kolyat had other worries with which to concern himself, and even less time to worry about them.

One at his right. He fired, ignoring the returning one that had been on Conrad's back, crawling toward him spiderlike, and turned to blast the ones advancing from behind. A bullet between the eyes of one husk, its head kicking back, the drive of the bullet redundantly snapping its neck. His open palm met another around the throat. It hissed and reached to shred the sleeve of his jacket. A third met his raised foot. Kolyat heard a crack of bone. But there were too many. Even Mouse was losing the fight, shooting wildly. A bullet screamed just inches over Kolyat's head. The returning one was gaining. He couldn't possibly take them all. If death was coming, he had no qualms about it, but to die in shame or in failure to his father's great name was worse than a thousand deaths.

Then, as though time had been tamed, silence descended and all came to a standstill.

Husks that had been gaining now floated over his head, pulled as if by some invisible string into the darkness, no light in their dead eyes. It gave him the chance to plant a bullet between the eyes of the one caught in the grip of his hand. Kolyat let go. It and what was left of its brains somersaulted away from him. There was no question as to what caused it, but he had not his father's biotic abilities, only the strength and vigor of youth. The power had come from somewhere else, and it wasn't until Conrad (breathing heavily and wincing at a wound in his shoulder) pointed it out, that Kolyat saw from where.

The pod—damaged, sizzling, on fire—had come to life. A hatch stood open on its side, and standing just inside its dark interior was Councilor Tevos. Red dress singed, cool aloofness frayed, barely hanging on, her palms glowed blue and there were tears in her eyes.

Kolyat crossed the distance toward her on quick feet. He threw a quick yet questioning glance at Mouse. He looked no better than the Councilor or Conrad, on his knees, shaking, maybe even praying. Kolyat hadn't the time to wonder. They were not out of the woods yet, as the old human saying goes.

Above came the plunk, plunk of feet on a hollow surface. Kolyat and Tevos looked up at the same time. She heard it. He saw it. Another husk crawling along the top of the pod, looking for the entrance that would see it toward the conclusion of its mission—destroy the Citadel Council. Kolyat shot once and added its body to the litter of husks covering the ground.

Once the echo of his shot died, an unmistakable hissing fusion said more were on the way. Kolyat ran toward Tevos, calling for Conrad and Mouse's aid. "We must hurry, Councilor. We are not safe. Where is the rest of the council?"

Clearly shaken, Tevos shook her head in answer when Sparatus stumbled from the opening behind her. He was limping, holding one arm to his side. The other held a pistol. "We are all that's left. Can you get us out of here?"

The turian councilor's news nearly froze Kolyat. The face of the third councilor surfaced in his mind, memories of their meeting after his father had saved the salarian's life flashing before his eyes. Were it not for Conrad saying, "Uh, Kolyat, I think we need to go now," he might not have recovered in time.

"Yes," Kolyat answered to both the councilor and to Conrad just as the sound of more feet echoed on the pod overhead. "To that ladder! Run!"

Husks had topped the pod. Shots rang out. Kolyat kept the councilor's moving. He wouldn't allow himself to see what they were up against. "Conrad! Mouse! To me!" he called over the sound of gunfire, and shoved the turian councilor onto the ladder ahead of the asari. "No," he told her, turning her toward the fighting. "We need your biotics. Protect them!"

Kolyat could not have known the person beside him had run with the likes of Aria T'Loak in their early days. Both asari had fought a hard fight for her place in the galaxy, but Tevos was not the mercenary she had once been. Many years had elapsed since those days. Aria would be disgusted to see how fear possessed her. Frayed, strained beyond measure in the fight to stay alive, Tevos was barely holding on. The sight of husks pouring overtop of the escape pod didn't help to steady her nerves either, but fight she would. She prayed her strength would hold out, and jetted a shockwave of biotics into the coming onslaught.

An explosion of silence followed the asari councilor's attack. Husks flew like ragdolls. Kolyat pushed the turian councilor upward, thankful to see Chorban assisting from above. But the silence lasted only so long. Not all of them had gone down. A good many continued forward, followed by more husks topping the pod. The hissing began and it started all over again. Where were they all coming from?

Tough decisions. These were the difficulties of command. It was a job Kolyat never wanted, but this war and the attack upon the Citadel had thrust it upon him. He had to make a choice. His first and foremost mission was to save the Council. Seeing Tevos up the ladder next was the obvious choice, but husks were coming in greater waves. They didn't have much time.

Not all of them were going to make it.

Looking back on those events, Kolyat would often wonder if his father would have looked on his decision at that moment as accomplishing more good than bad. There was no way to know the true answer, not from himself or from his father. What happened, Kolyat would live with for the rest of his life.

He chose Conrad over the councilor. His thinking process had been: assault rifle causes more damage over a wider area, biotics imperative if any of us are to survive, shotgun less effective. He'd grabbed Conrad by the collar and shoved him onto the ladder. Kolyat remembered the shocked look on his face. "Why me?" he seemed to be asking. Kolyat did not answer. Conrad went up and out.

A deafening sound cut into the barrage of assault rifle fire. Kolyat popped two husks before they could reach Mouse. The pod was crunching, moving. The gash in the sidewall ripping, opening, spilling the husk bodies that had plugged it. From it, emerged a sight Kolyat could not give a name to. It was huge, powerful enough to move the weight of the pod on its own; the biomechanical body of a beast with wicked spiny protuberances raining down its back on either side of the spinal cord, and sitting between its massive shoulders was the upper portion of a turian skull. Dead, white lights issued from its two eyes and it sighted the three of them.

There was only one choice Kolyat could make.

Tevos had just biotically raked an armload of husks. She tossed them at the massive beast; the force of her power, and the weight of so many bodies, slammed the creature backward by several steps, knocking it against the pod. But it wasn't going to stop it. Kolyat grabbed her arm just as the beast righted itself and charged.

His plan was to be the last one up the ladder. As soon as Tevos cleared the opening, Kolyat would reach for Mouse, but it didn't happen that way.

Before taking the ladder and climbing its rungs to the top, the councilor shot off one more shockwave in an effort to thwart the beast's forward momentum. Be it the severity of their situation, or Kolyat pushing her upward, her aim was not true. It ricocheted off a wall, knocking approaching husks from their path, but leaving Mouse open. Terrified, Mouse centered the full force of his firepower at the beast. Heavy armor plating made it virtually impenetrable, but worst of all, his shots were nothing more than annoying metal gnats, drawing the beast's attention.

It happened fast, and yet in Kolyat's eidetic memory, the incident lived a lifetime.

 _My hands reach for Mouse, fingers brush his arm. Husk drops down from the ceiling, bats assault rifle from Mouse's trembling hands. Another skids toward his feet, sinks its teeth into the flesh of his thigh. Mouse screams. A third leaps from the ground, mouth open, claws bared, ripping flesh. Mouse's cry garbles in a spray of blood._

" **Mouse!"**

The beast barreled in, finishing the scene before Kolyat could see more, knocking him against the rungs of the ladder. Each one dug into his back and pinged painfully against the back of his skull, but more painful was knowing he had failed the kid. He had allowed him to be slaughtered when it was himself who should have gone down. In that moment, he understood the feelings of his father when they stood over the body of his mother, seconds before the hanar committed her body to Kahje's deep waters. Kolyat understood his father's grief, and the feelings of worthlessness that had undoubtedly played in his mind. How could he be a good father, he must have thought, if he could not protect the mother of his child?

Kolyat knew what he must do, even if it meant sacrificing his own life to do so. But he never got the chance. Someone laid hold of him from above and yanked him upward. He felt the rungs of the ladder under his kicking feet, and he fought, trying to latch the toe of his boot into one and pull himself back down. More hands—human, salarian, turian—pulled at his jacket, his arms, his body until they had yanked him fully through the opening.

"Seal it!" someone cried.

A clank of metal. The flare from an omni-tool welder. Kolyat fought. He couldn't let them seal the tunnel. He had to get back down there. But two arms held him tight around the torso. He could not move.

"He's dead, Kolyat! Mouse is dead!" a voice pleaded into his ear. It was Conrad.

How to make the human understand? He knew Mouse was dead. No amount of medi-gel could save him now, but he could be avenged. Mouse's young life had been cut short and no one was more responsible than Kolyat himself. He must avenge that which he lost.

Drell were known for their strength and resiliency, particularly so when emotions ran high, as his was now, but Conrad was stronger than Kolyat had given him credit for...and turians were stronger. Injured or not, Sparatus gripped Kolyat by the collar of his shredded jacket and yanked him forward.

"Get ahold of yourself, drell!"

Stuffed into a tight space, the two were nose to nose. Kolyat could smell the fear on his breath. That and the remembrance of his mission were what calmed him, righted his mind, though Sparatus held him until Chorban had sealed the entrance into the passage below.

"Your friend is dead. There's nothing we can do for him now. But we are still alive."

Kolyat spoke his words carefully. "Let. Me. Go." He then removed the turian councilor's hands from his collar. If he was gruff about it, then so be it. He had no desire for diplomacy.

"We won't be much longer if we don't get out of here," Chorban said, his voice controlled but shaky while he converted his omni-tool from welder back into whatever program he used to control the keeper. "Where is our next destination?"

"We have to get to the safe room," Tevos said. She'd taken a position beside Conrad, an arm around him, consoling him, checking the wound on his shoulder. "It's not far from here."

"Yes, but we'll be stalked every step of the way," Sparatus growled. "We need to get moving."

Kolyat buried his emotions under a blanket of numbness, just as his father had taught him. Mouse was gone. Couldn't take it back now. He had a mission to complete.

"Chorban," he said, and gained the salarian's attention. There was sympathy in his expression, but Kolyat wouldn't accept it. "Lead the way."

* * *

 **Let's hold a moment of silence for the loss of Mouse. :(**

 **Thoughts on this chapter? Leave a review...**


	20. All For ONE, Part IV

_**MASS EFFECT: ONE**_

* * *

 _"Amonkira, Lord of Hunters,_

 _grant that my hands be steady,_

 _my aim true,_

 _and my feet swift._

 _And should the worst come to pass..."_

 _~Thane Krios~_

* * *

 **All For ONE**

 _ **Part IV**_

 **Before Endgame**

 _ **J**_ ack wasn't running away anymore. She'd had her taste of freedom—from bonds both animal and spiritual. Brutes or no brutes, Jack wasn't turning back. She barreled forward like a train on a collision course. Someone called her name. Prangley maybe, or Pebbles. She blocked the distraction. If she lost anyone now, it would kill her inside, kill the Jack she had worked so hard to cultivate. Better to be dead, to go down in a blaze of glory, than stand back and watch them all die. But fearing what may or may not happen, as the Reaper war raged on, was still just a distraction. Her energy could have only one focus.

Electricity hummed, pulled up from the very depths of Jack's soul, from the ugly memories, the beatings, the torture, the confinement. Every nugget of hatred that continued to fester within, laying dormant and unused, came to the surface like molten rock and became a blistering conflagration of rage that Jack detonated upon the brutes blocking her path.

The ground shook with an invisible energy. A bright blue flash enveloped and blazed from Jack. What followed wasn't a boom or a bam, but _WHOMPF!_ So low in register as to be felt and not heard. Mass and energy hit the brutes with FTL-like force. They never had a chance. The detonation ripped the brutes apart and flung their bits and pieces in all directions.

It hit the St. James Park Station with a similar force, shattering windows, cracking masonry and crumbling eaves to the ground. Seen from the air, the underground station resembled a large crucifix—a center spire with four wings jutting out from each side—and Jack was its messiah. She should have descended in pieces along with the brutes. Instead, she appeared out of the blue fire like a phoenix, clearing the first door into the station.

One by one, the rest of the team followed, Prangley's barrier protecting their heads from falling debris. They ran past the main entrance with its few gift shops, through another set of doors into the building proper. But Jack never saw a bit of it. She just ran, not knowing the fate of those behind her, caring but not caring, afraid but immune to fear, numb but stinging from head to toe. She was aware only of the energy that had been sucked out of her. She had nothing left to give.

Stumbling just inside the station, taking a display of wrapped scones outside a coffee shop with her to the ground, terror roared into Jack's heart. She had heard of biotics pushing the envelope of their abilities to the point that they could hardly walk. She had even seen it, but she had never experienced it. She felt newborn, weak, useless. If this was the end, she feared she had done a piss poor job of saving everyone. She had to get up. More brutes and a contingent of Reaper soldiers were right on their heels. She needed to fight, but Jack knew better than to think she could fight her way out of a paper bag. She couldn't even see straight.

Vision blurry, she scarcely felt the strong arms that pulled her up, or recognized the white and yellow armor in the corner of her eye. Her fuzzy focus was on the regal posture of one blue-skinned asari whose boots were crunching in shattered glass, approaching the entrance she had just gone through and raising her arms.

"Jacob, Ensign Prangley," Jack heard Samara calling as if from far away.

Several cannibals had entered through the crumbling façade of the left wing, through the remaining brutes bashing in doorways, crushing more masonry and twisting metal to gain access to their quarry. Salarian weapons shattered cannibal bodies into piles of shuddering, bloody flesh. But the brutes were not to be deterred. They would get in if they had to tear down the building around them.

"Channel all of your energy upon the structure's support," Samara told the two men who had warily flanked her. Imminent death or not, one couldn't help but trust the voice of the justicar. She was as calm as if they were watching it happen from a vid screen. "Use your pull field, use whatever you have and bring the roof down upon their heads."

Jack would have loved to see it, but the station had more than one entrance from the street. They had no time to dawdle watching the three biotics who stood as sentinels upon the brutes' destruction.

The building began to quake.

Kirrahe and Grunt were ushering the rest of the salarian tactical group toward the underground entrance. An ineffective velvet stanchion used to march tourists in singular file was no match for a krogan. Grunt flung the mass of red velvet ropes and golden stands out of their way into a display of six clocks, labeled TRAIN INTERVALS. Glass shattered. Dials twanged in their housing.

The building shuddered.

Jack's strength was returning quicker than it might have for any other human biotic, and yet the same someone who had pulled her to her feet was pulling her toward the underground entrance. She wanted to scream at the merc with the raspy accent that he was going the wrong way, that they should be protecting Prangley and the others, when a shot rang over her head and buried itself into the wall.

Cannibals! The enemy was coming in from the Petty France Street entrance.

Thinking of nothing but Prangley's safety, Jack forced herself to stand upright and brandished her assault rifle. She wasn't the only one. Zaeed, Grunt and Kirrahe also turned their weapons onto their pursuers. Shots rang out. Cannibals crumbled like the masonry outside just as the floor beneath their feet rumbled, and then a sound like a thousand explosions followed their screeching death cries.

A thick dust cloud raced toward them with the force of a hurricane, knocking light-footed salarians from their feet. Jack could care less for salarian bumps and bruises. Her only thought was of Prangley. Her mind conjured the worst thing it possibly could—him buried under a mound of rubble, skull crushed, life oozing from him in fresh red streamlets. Jack couldn't dwell on those ugly thoughts for long, much less go to Prangley's aid, not with Zaeed at her back, forcing her through the underground entrance and downward. Jack's fist struck feebly across his jaw, after which she struggled like a lunatic to pull herself from his grip. The Aussie cussed her, grappled with her, but the only thing that halted her was a streak of blue light reflecting off the walls of the descending stairwell.

Jack whipped around in time to see approaching marauders fly past the open entranceway like matchsticks. Their bodies hit the wall. Over the rumbling ground and the settling of dust and rubble, came the crack of weak Reaper-constructed bones. Their demise meant nothing to Jack. It was the team that mattered, the lives of her people. If she wasn't there to make sure of their safety, they weren't safe. Her breath came short with every one of them that made it through the underground entrance.

First Jacob. Covered in soot, he looked like a ghost instead of a black man. Second Samara, walking calmly as though she had nothing to fear. Jack didn't think she'd ever breathe again until Prangley came stumbling through the entrance, coughing and hacking, his dark hair turned white with soot. She pictured Rodriguez laying on the ground of a church floor and dying, and Jack's heart almost caved. She wasn't emotional by nature, unless that emotion was wrapped in hatred, but when Prangley walked through alive, Jack grabbed him up in the fiercest hug she had in her.

Breathing heavily, Prangley patted Jack on the back. "I'm good," he affirmed. "I'm okay. I'm alive."

And just as quickly as she wrapped him in her arms, Jack pushed him back and punched him with all she had in the arm. It took all she had not to punch him in the face. "You do that to me again, Prangley, and I'll beat your ass."

"Ow." Prangley rubbed his arm. "Yes, ma'am."

The words were barely out of his mouth when Jack rounded on Zaeed and pummeled him full in the chest armor. "And you! Play the dashing hero one more time, and I swear to God…"

Somewhere in the dark, Jacob was laughing.

"Hey!" Zaeed countered in his own defense. "I'm just doing what a certain commander asked me to. 'Don't let anything happened to Jack' was her last command. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not piss Shepard off."

Jack would have responded if she had known what to say to that. Grunts and growls were sounding outside the underground entrance anyway, and Kirrahe was quick to begin ushering them toward the stairs.

"We need to move, everyone. Hurry."

They all began descending except for Samara. "Go," she said. "I'll block the entrance."

Prangley halted even as Jack gave him a gentle pull down the stairwell. "Hey wait, weren't we supposed to plant an artifact on the roof?"

"No time," Kirrahe said. "Our mission is now one of distraction."

The LET team, now larger in number and more visible than it had been hours ago, descended to the underground station in time to hear the twisting of metal and the crumble of more masonry. The job of blocking the underground entrance would not take as much biotic power as the entire wing of a building. Samara would seal them in and keep the enemy moving forward. There was no turning back now.

 **EEE**

 _ **"D**_ id you feel that?" The question came from Councilor Tevos.

Their return trek through the tunnels had taken them some distance from the sight of the husk attack. The weight of the decision that led to Mouse's ultimate demise continued to weigh on Kolyat, threatening to slow him both physically and mentally, despite assurances from both Tevos and Conrad that he'd done the best he could. But he'd been able to compartmentalize his emotions, to separate his despair from the continuing mission. The remaining ones of the Council were still vulnerable, and though the safe room was close and Keepie kept them on a straightforward course toward it, they weren't there yet. Uncomfortable scratching sounds in connecting tunnels were a constant worry.

Kolyat placed his hand on the wall of the tunnel. The vibration of a distant explosion still ricocheted through it.

"It was close. An explosion of some sort."

"By the goddess." Tevos looked to Kolyat. They were all thinking the same morbid thought. "Did something happen to the Citadel?"

"I cannot say." Kolyat had no other answer to give, but it wasn't enough to satisfy Sparatus.

"You can't or you won't?"

No one in the confines of the tunnel could have read the expression in Kolyat's eyes but his father, and he was not there. Kolyat was grateful when Chorban decided to answer for him.

"We've not yet been able to ascertain the cause of the Citadel's sudden…what would you call it?...hiccup. Suffice it to say, we are all still here, and there's still power, so it couldn't have been that bad."

"Is that what caused your escape pod to crash?" Kolyat asked the asari councilor as they moved through the tunnel.

"Yes, partly. When the power went out, we careened out of control. The pod had been moving on momentum only when it struck something. We still don't know what."

"I saw it in a flash through a forward camera," Sparatus said. "Whatever it was, it was big and ugly, and standing right in our path."

"And Councilor Valern?" Kolyat asked.

Tevos paused. They all did. She took a deep breath and looked Kolyat in the eyes. "He's dead. I'm sorry, Kolyat. I know that your father gave his life to save him."

Kolyat hung his head for a moment, taking that bit of information in. "How?"

"Shot in the back," Sparatus said. There was a twinge of sadness in the turian's tone, but Kolyat could only focus on the contempt. "He didn't move fast enough when the Reapers attacked the Tower and the bastards shot him in the back before he could make it to the escape pod."

Kolyat caught the asari councilor's expression, the drawing of her brows together, the uncertainness in her eyes. If she had seen him looking, would her expression have changed? Kolyat didn't want to know.

"We should keep moving," he said.

"Yes, of course," Tevos answered, and their party continued through the tunnel. "That explosion," Tevos said some seconds later. "I hope no one was hurt."

"No one non-Reaper anyway," Jahleed said, his voice a tad shaky.

"What if someone is hurt?" Conrad asked. He'd recovered some of his bravery since they'd lost Mouse, but the blow had set them all back. "Shouldn't we—?"

"No." The answer hadn't come from Kolyat, but from Sparatus. "We cannot afford the risk. If someone is in trouble, they're going to have to handle it themselves. Besides, didn't the drell say someone was coming with a ship?"

Though glad the turian councilor was safe, and galactic government still stood, Kolyat had tired of him. Sparatus had taken leadership out of his hands not long after the rescue. They'd floundered ahead in the direction only the keeper could make. Kolyat could have stepped forward, reasserted his command, but he remained mute. He spoke only when the situation warranted it, like now.

He looked at the councilor, forcing himself to meet his painted face and beady green eyes. "That was the plan, Councilor."

"What do you mean? Plan? You couldn't organize a better rescue mission than this."

Kolyat absorbed the insult as he had his emotions. "We've not heard from the second half of our team since the Citadel spun out of control. I can only assume that something happened to them. They were supposed to have contacted us by now to name a location for pickup."

"Great," Sparatus muttered. "That's just great. Now what are we supposed to do?"

"Just as you've suggested," he answered with finality. He wanted to do as Conrad suggested. Something ate at him to follow the source of the explosion, but as much as he was beginning to despise every word that came from the councilor's mouth, Kolyat knew Sparatus's idea was not incorrect. "We keep making for the safe room. To deviate from that course would not be worth the risk. We get there, we bunker down and we pray we can ride this out until we hear from the second team."

Sparatus's bone-like brows drew together. "Pray? _Pray?_ What good is prayer at this stage? You've lost your mind, boy. What if we never hear from this supposed _second team_? We need to get off this station!"

"Councilor," Tevos said, calm but stern. "You've made your point."

"Tevos—"

"No more, Councilor. We've little choice in our path now." The asari's voice had dropped exponentially before she turned her unusual green eyes to Kolyat. "Do what you've set out to do, Kolyat. The longer we delay, the quicker danger will find us."

 _Constant motion, Kolyat. Remember that. It is your weapon when all other weapons fail you. A moving target is a difficult target. One who lingers gets caught in the crosshairs._

"Yes, sir."

Kolyat couldn't be sure if he had answered Tevos, or answered his father; he only knew, no matter how much he wanted out from under Sparatus's glare, or how much he'd rather be fighting the enemy than running from them, they couldn't stay here. The enemy was on the march, and would always be closing in. His only hope was that the safe room was truly safe.

 **EEE**

 _ **B**_ ack plastered to the wall, Aria leaned her gaze over her shoulder and looked around the corner. The mutated thing, an insult to batarians everywhere, was still as clueless as it was a moment ago. Every single one of the Reapers' bastardized creatures was a blasphemous affront to all species, but this type was the only one that made Aria's skin crawl.

It wasn't merely the distorted and distended body, or the already unattractive batarian facial features stretched to monstrous proportions. It was the right arm. As opposed to the left, which was proportionate to its body, the right arm was longer, meatier, and ended in a cannon that could fire particularly devastating shots when given the chance. But even that wasn't their most hideous aspect. The arm itself wasn't an arm. It was a human corpse, twisted and misshapen, running with tubes and biomechanical wires, fused into the body of a batarian monster. That might be the greatest insult, given their tendency to hate each other, but it made sense in a way. The Reapers had conquered batarian and human space long before they conquered others. They had made a killing machine of their earliest conquest.

Good thing they were easy to kill.

Nevertheless, stealth was required. She wasn't interested in a long, drawn out fight. This needed to go quick and without damage to the keeper. Aria couldn't remember the name of the salarian scientist whose ingenious plan this was, but she could remember what he told her: "One thing you have to remember about these beings. They are not warriors. They cannot fight for you, but they can follow simple commands."

Aria had discovered another fact about keepers on her own. One had best get out of the way when the little critters went about their duties. They'll walk a straight line toward their destination no matter who was in their path, be it mercenary or dignitary. One had to think of them as moving furniture and scoot accordingly or be involuntarily moved. If anything, she liked that aspect of the keepers. Reminded Aria of herself. Get out of Aria's way or she _will_ move you.

Powering the omni-tool, Aria opened the salarian's keeper-controlling program and followed the steps of finding and acquiring the signal coming from the keeper's backpack as he had shown her. Simple commands? Okay. Aria punched into the keeper's signal, COME HERE, which she hoped roughly translated into "follow my signal."

The jumble of squiggly lines on the communication readout spiked and then plummeted. A garbled backlash of undecipherable content flared across the holographic display. If Aria didn't know any better, she'd think there was a war going within its crustaceous mind. Had the salarian reported such trouble connecting? She couldn't remember. Aria tried again.

COME HERE.

This time the lines flattened like a dead heartbeat. She looked up, questioning. Bailey was itching his trigger finger, ready to go, but he had no answers for her, only an intensity to get going. His body language said, _Hurry_. Aria's said, _Shit._ Anxiety was creeping up her back. Something didn't feel right.

Aria tried one more time. COME HERE, she entered, wishing she could add "you little fucker" to the end. Somehow, she didn't think that would compute.

The dead-heartbeat lines began to bounce again. Thump, thump. A burst of static. A command perhaps being overwritten. The Citadel? Or someone else? Aria hadn't liked the presence of a guarding cannibal over this particular keeper from the start, and she was beginning to dislike the idea of using it at all, but they were short on options. It was this way or give up and go home. Home was out of the question.

The burst of strangely unwelcome communication ended, and Aria's command went through. Upon her screen was exactly what the salarian had shown her in the tunnels, the easy lines of communication between his omni-tool and a keeper. This one wasn't going to get a name.

Aria risked another look around the corner, and what she saw made her smile. She was as short on smiles as they were on options. The feeling was a welcome one to her facial muscles. The keeper had halted its mysterious doings at the station and turned, almost as if it was looking for her. _That's it,_ she thought. _Right this way._ It exited the lounge and walked a straight line toward her signal as she had hoped. And in its way was the one thing she wanted out of it—the cannibal.

Aria gave Bailey a nod, which said, "Be ready." He returned the gesture, although something seemed to be diverting his attention. He kept looking behind them, down the corridor. Aria drew her brows together, asking the obvious question, and Bailey tapped his ear.

 _Do you hear something?_

Aria gave a short shake of her head and went back to watching the keeper close the distance between itself and the cannibal. Aria held her breath. Her biggest fear was that the cannibal would attack the keeper, pump it full of mass accelerating lead, but like a frightened child moving away from an oblivious bug, the batarian mutant began walking backward. Right into her trap.

Aria's famously devious smile lacked none of its punch, even with a bit of lethargy thrown in, but the smile dissolved at an eerily familiar sound—a whispered snarl, a breathy growl. Somewhere at the back of her neck, a cold chill began to work its way straight down her spine like a razor sharp shard of ice. Aria turned slowly, her pupils dilating to the size of proximity mines, nearly obliterating the deep blue of the irises, and looked behind her.

Adjutant.

EEE

 _ **A**_ sinking sensation had already taken hold in Aria's gut, long before the sound of an adjutant reached her ears. With the cannibal, there was a high probability they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but there was no coincidence to the presence of adjutants. Those things had appeared in Omega for a reason. They were only part Reaper constructs. A soldier would not have found them on the battlefield, directed by Reapers to decimate their enemies. The majority of their existence the adjutants owed solely to the Illusive Man. The only place one would find them is wherever _He_ wanted them.

Somewhere, on some shelf of useful knowledge, this information sat in the back of Aria's mind. Even when the one attacked her in lockup, she understood where it came from. It wasn't Reaper as much as it was Cerberus. She'd had no time to contemplate the implications then, nor did she now, but the answer was obvious. The Illusive Man had control of this station, of the keepers and the other creatures upon it. He knew they were coming. The question was how much control did he actually have?

The breathy, guttural groan was close. There, appearing from an open doorway at their flank was the adjutant. Gangly it moved, each step an apparent effort. With their cumbersome bodies one would think so, but for such unwieldy creatures, adjutants could move horrifically fast once they'd marked their prey, and this one already had them in its sights, probably since they first set foot in this section of the Presidium.

She and Bailey had no time to perfect a defense. On Omega, deep in the mines, she, Nyreen and Shepard had plenty of cover—electrical equipment, work stations, ore processors. There wasn't much cover on the Presidium besides comfy couches. No wonder everyone here was dead.

This was no time to play it safe. The adjutant was charging, and when it charged, it jumped. Aria did the first thing that came to mind. Using _lash_ like a lasso, she grabbed the still oblivious cannibal from behind. Biotic power yanked it backward as though she had roped it about the neck and pulled. The adjutant leapt, and met the cannibal face first. Bailey never had a chance to fire a single shot.

Caught momentarily in the _lash_ effect, the adjutant and cannibal levitated together, intertwined and crashed into the wall. That was as far the effect would last on the adjutant. The effect might have lasted longer on the cannibal, but with one blow, the adjutant killed it, righted itself, and gave Aria a hissing growl. Like the cannibal, fused into its meaty right arm was a weapon. It was pointing it in their direction.

"Oh, shit. Get down!"

Aria barreled into Bailey, knocking him to the ground just as two blue bolts of lightning shot overhead. They landed in a heap on the other side, keeper mere inches from them. Aria barely saw it skitter of the way. COME HERE probably continued to play over and over in its little mechanical mind, but Aria's only thought was that her quick thinking hadn't been enough to set the adjutant back.

Quick to her feet, Aria pulled Bailey to his. "Go! We need a defensive position!"

Bailey didn't question her. How could he? There was no forgetting the thing the two of them faced at the start of the hell they now found themselves in. Nor could they forget their own individual strengths. She was strategy. Bailey was knowledge of the Citadel.

They moved into the corridor, past the lounge their keeper had been busily at work in and around a corner. Behind them came the adjutant's cries, in quick pursuit. Aria had no choice but to follow Bailey through another door that opened upon his command, the first room he came to with a full bank of windows. Bad idea, but their choices were limited. It was an office of some sort. Desks offered some protection, but more so the raised partition on the other side of the room. They made a beeline for it, weaving between the desks and taking a small flight of three or four steps…

An adjutant shrieked and Aria's world went hazy.

 **EEE**

 _ **B**_ ailey wasn't an innocent to what biotic charges could do. He'd seen bodies ripped to pieces by singularity charged with warp or some other biotic power. It was never a pretty sight. And there was nothing he could do to stop the electrical charge that impacted Aria. She lit like a blue Christmas tree, back arching, feet momentarily leaving the ground. The effects of an adjutant strike, as Aria had described to him, were not only severely disorienting, but intensely painful. The mind blanks, the body screams and your world becomes shadowy, dreamlike.

Bailey would have pulled her out of the line of fire, but he couldn't touch her or he would have become wrapped in the singularity as well. Quick reflexes helped him duck behind the partition and fire around it at the incoming adjutant. It dodged his fire with a roll, but the point was to block it from hitting her a second time. He'd succeeded. It was just enough of a break for the effects of the adjutant's strike to wear off. Aria's limp body hit the wall, glanced off a countertop and landed on the ground at Bailey's feet, where he quickly pulled her behind the partition.

The adjutant was closing in. With Aria struggling to regain physical control over her body, Bailey was on his own, and he didn't have her powers. His best bet against this guy was constant movement and constant cover. Bailey looked left. Past the opposite end of the partition, on the other side of the room, was another door, an exit. Bailey had no idea where it lead, but it did give him an idea.

On his feet, he shot a suppressive fire in the general direction of the adjutant. He didn't calculate its nearness or wonder if his shots made contact. He merely needed the distraction. He pulled a device from his belt, gave it a twist and then gave it a toss. The room lit up like the sun. The floor beneath his feet rumbled. Glass shattered around him. Shredded paper fluttered like leaves. An adjutant shriek pierced his ears. He didn't look to see if he'd gotten it. The explosion had woken a disoriented Aria, her eyes open in wide-eyed shock. Bailey pulled her up, got her moving, and ran for the door, his fingers doing a dance over his omni-tool to get the door opened.

A screech behind them. Singed, but still advancing, the adjutant raised its biomechanical arm. The door opened. Bailey pushed through, but Aria, still weak and disoriented, raised her shotgun. She had precious seconds. Vengeance glowed in her blue eyes. Bailey reached to pull her through, and she shot a _carnage_ effect point-blank, striking the sack on top the adjutant's head. It snapped back, momentarily knocked off balance. Time enough to get her through and close the door before its singularity-laced shot could strike her once again.

Bailey's fingers did another dance. Injured, the adjutant screeched, and the door locked with a click seconds before the ogre bent it inward with the force of a sledgehammer.

Aria looked like hell.

"You okay?" He touched her arm only to have it slapped away.

"Don't worry about me, goddammit."

Bailey should have known better. She'd reacted no different the last time he showed concern. Aria didn't care about her injuries. She had one goal and nothing else mattered beyond it.

"We've got to get back to that keeper," she said, voice haggard. _"Fast."_

If she wasn't already weakened, Bailey might have shaken her to her senses. Instead, he gruffly grabbed her arm and put it around his shoulder. "Okay, we find the keeper, but if you don't hang onto me, you're going nowhere fast."

Hefting Aria's weight, each with their own weapon in hand, Bailey led them as fast as he could back to the last place they found the keeper. They were almost there, heading blindly down a dark corridor when a keeper seemingly appeared from out of nowhere. He couldn't even be sure it was the same one until it came to a sudden stop before them as though waiting for a command.

"Stop, stop," Aria said, winded. She pulled her arm from around Bailey's shoulder and tapped her omni-tool.

Bailey didn't like this. They had an adjutant hot on their tails. It wouldn't be long before it found them. "Aria, we don't have time for this."

"This is what we are here for," she said over her shoulder. "Adjutant be damned."

"We're the ones that'll be damned in a few minutes if we don't get moving."

"Patience, Owen. I didn't come all this way to lose."

A screech sounded from somewhere behind them. "Ah, shit. What are you telling that thing?"

"I'm telling it to take me to its leader."

Bailey glanced behind him. He could see nothing in the dark. Same went for Aria's comment. "Huh?"

But she never answered him. Aria simply pulled him when the keeper began to move. Considering what was after them, the keeper moved interminably slow. But this was keeper pace. Nothing hurried it. Nothing slowed it. It was what it was, and they had to follow at whatever pace it kept, whether whispered growls followed them or not. It eventually brought them to an inoperable lift.

Bailey was quick to power his own omni-tool. "Do I need to open it?"

"Wait," Aria said, touching one hand to his arm. "Just wait."

"Need I remind you what's following us?"

"No."

Just as she said it, the keeper raised itself up and operated some unseen mechanism in the wall beside the lift. Seconds later, a panel beside the lift doors, wide and tall enough to admit one keeper, slid noiselessly aside.

"Holy shit, that Chorban wasn't kidding, was he? Where the hell is that thing taking us?"

"Up," Aria answered as a growl issued nearby in the darkened corridor. The keeper moved into the opening. "And we'd better move fast."

Bailey had his weapon aimed at the sound when Aria grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the opening, but he would have none of it. He yanked his arm from her grasp. "What are you, woman? Nuts? Get in!"

"You won't last five seconds against an adjutant, Owen. Get your ass in the tunnel before the keeper leaves us behind."

"No. You're injured. You go first."

Of all the grand times to have an argument over which one was the toughest. "Bailey, you hardheaded son of a bitch! We don't have time to argue about this."

Bailey turned back to her, face set. "Then I guess you better get your ass in their first before we're both dead."

She wasn't going to budge him. She had a feeling not even a bullet would do it. With a growl, she muttered, "Asshole," and moved for the tunnel.

"Yeah, yeah, that's what my wife always called me too. Now, get in!" Bailey gave Aria a rough push, and though she would have loved to blast him with a biotic bolt, she reined the desire in and followed the keeper.

Inside the tunnel, there was a dim light, enough to see the keeper stopping at another panel ahead. Aria was halfway through when a blast from Bailey's rifle lit the dark corridor. The adjutant was close. She gave Bailey a few more rounds, but when the panel began to close, Aria pulled him into the opening, firing her own weapon out into the dark as cover. Bailey's right leg barely made it in before it slid shut. Seconds later, the panel shook with a tremendous impact.

"Go!"

Bailey pushed her toward the keeper. Another panel in the tunnel opened. They followed the spindly-legged crustacean in and found themselves in a square compartment, replete with its own keeper station. It was just tall enough for a keeper, which meant Aria and Bailey had no choice but to squeeze into the compartment. There was hardly enough room to catch their breaths.

"What now?" Bailey asked, breathing heavily. The keeper answered his question not a second later. The compartment began to move. "We're going up."

"You bet your ass we are," Aria said with self-satisfied smirk.

* * *

 **Hope you enjoyed this chapter, and to my guest reviewer "Get", who left this comment: _"_** _get to the damn good part already nuff with the side tracking!"_ **...Not sure what you call "the good part", but my only focus when writing this story was the characters. And in all honesty, this story is all about "side tracking." It's all filler. It's the story of what happened in between. I hope that explanation is enough for you, because the focus and the forward momentum of the story isn't going to change. Thanks for reading, though!**


	21. All For ONE, Part V

**A/N: Thanks to FassTDriver (Twitter handle) for her help with my Spanish translations in this and future chapters.**

* * *

 _ **MASS EFFECT: ONE**_

* * *

 _"Amonkira, Lord of Hunters,_

 _grant that my hands be steady,_

 _my aim true,_

 _and my feet swift._

 _And should the worst come to pass..."_

 _~Thane Krios~_

* * *

 **All For ONE**

 _ **Part V**_

 **Before Endgame**

 _ **C**_ ompared to the destruction above ground, the underground tube system was in a remarkable state of preservation. No crumbled masonry to dodge, no skycars that had crashed down from above, no bodies, nor was it in disrepair, crawling with lichen or dripping with groundwater. The city had maintained it. Working lights illuminated their path. Jack hadn't felt this secure since she and the STG team landed on Earth. But it was an illusion.

The enemy had begun to break through Samara's makeshift barrier not long after the team had descended into the tube system. They couldn't be far behind. Jack shot a glance over her shoulder. Unearthly growls were echoing over the sound of their running feet.

"How much farther?" Jack called to Kirrahe. Didn't do much good to whisper now.

"This stretch of tunnel is less than a sixth of a kilometer," Kirrahe answered. Jack could hardly believe it. Pebbles didn't even sound winded. "We should be there soon…as long as we do not encounter any obstacles."

"Bring'em on!" came the Grunt response. "I say we stand and fight. All this running is bad for my reputation."

"Running keeps you alive to fight another day, Grunt," Jacob said, running beside him, still looking a bit like a ghost, but now he was a ghost with color.

"And dying in battle is how a krogan lives forever!"

"You go ahead and live forever in death, Grunt," Zaeed called from the rear, every so often shooting a glance over his shoulder. "I'm going on a vacation when this shit is over. I'll be on the beach, sipping goddamn mai tai's while your krogan ass rots beneath the streets of London!"

Grunt's laughter echoed off the ancient concrete walls where it likely met their pursuers somewhere in the dark, spurring them ever onward. Jack had to laugh. She missed being with the guys. Things had been awkward between them two years ago, at the outset of their mission to defeat the Collectors. There were a few scuffs, ugly exchanges of words on more than one occasion, but by the time the mission was complete, they had become a band of brothers…and sisters.

Their strange camaraderie was lost on Prangley, however. Jack had told her students many stories about her service on the Normandy and the crew she had bonded with. She wanted them to understand what it meant to serve alongside another, to become as close as a brother or sister in battle that you would give your life without a second thought to save them. She'd drilled the idea in all of them, and some of them had already made that ultimate sacrifice. Now these three knuckleheads were ruining all her feel-good stories.

Jogging beside her, winded, tired, Prangley said as low as he could, "These are the guys you served with?"

Winded herself, Jack opened her mouth to answer, but it was Samara who spoke, sounding no more the worse for wear than Kirrahe. "They may have their odd ways, young one, but you will not find better warriors on the battlefield."

Jack chucked a thumb at the asari. "What she said. But if you ask me, they're really just a bunch of kids!"

"Kids with high powered sniper rifles that could pop a man's head from his shoulders from a thousand yards," Zaeed called.

"Speak for yourself, human. I am no child! I AM KROGAN!"

"Who you trying to kid, Grunt?" Jacob called behind him. "You're like two years old!"

Despite their rather dire situation, they were all laughing as they jogged through the tunnel to whatever was going to greet them on the other side of Westminster Station. No matter what happened or who came out of it with their life or their sanity intact, this one moment would live with the old Normandy crew for however long they had left. Though, Jack couldn't help but feel the void that surrounded them. Not just the void of those they had lost—Thane, Mordin and Legion—but the void of those still alive and fighting to stay that way in the midst of this war—Commander Shepard, Miranda, Kasumi, Garrus, Tali. They were all out there, fighting to bring this hell to an end. But of them all, Jack found her mind went back to the one person whose death would mean the end of her—Rodriguez.

 **EEE**

 _ **L**_ uciana cursed herself. The table was already there, so she leaned against it and restrained the desire to pound her fist onto its wooden surface.

"Luciana?" Jasper's whisper carried like the wind in the cathedral's silence.

A wave of pain and nausea had hit her all at once when she tried to walk out of the baptistry. If she hadn't caught the table's edge, she would have fallen to the floor. Whatever strength the saints above had given her to get to her feet, they must have withdrawn it as soon as she left the room. A golden chalice, used in whatever religious rituals the church thought up, had sprung from the table and clattered onto the hard marble floor. The reverberating twang had been as loud to Luciana's ears as it was likely salacious to the ears of husks.

Shame prevented her from looking at Jasper. She could easily picture his concern. He was the one encouraging her to gain her strength, to get up and move around, so that she could selfishly save herself. How was she going to save anyone if she could hardly stand? She was only making matters worse.

It felt like her abdomen had opened up again. Luciana felt under her Academy uniform. Her hand came away sticky, but with drying blood. The wound was still closed.

"I'm okay," she answered, hoping it didn't sound like a lie. What if she had opened up something internally? _God, I hope not._

Luciana stared at the chalice and grimaced. She wasn't going to bend over and pick it up anytime soon, no matter how sacrilegious it might be to leave it lying on the floor. But staring at it brought back a memory so vivid, of standing on Mateo's hard-packed ground, that Luciana could see the cracks in the dry earth instead of the cathedral's marble floor. Wind and dust whipped all around her. She was eleven years old, staring at a metal cogwheel on the ground, and feeling just as terrified as she was now.

Abuelita sat in a rickety old rocking chair, her salt and pepper hair swaying in the wind, her gnarly wooden cane propelling her back and forth in the chair. It was lesson time, and when Abuelita sat before her in that chair during lesson time, it was like standing before an errant ruler (only minus the crown; Abuelita's crown was her graying hair).

" _Hazlo, Luciana,"_ she said. (Do it, Luciana.)

" _No puedo."_ (I can't.)

" _Sí puedes, chica. Recógelo!"_ (Yes, you can, girl. Now, pick it up.)

The cogwheel, left over from the early days when their people had migrated to this moon and used heavy machinery to mine the caverns for goods to trade and keep themselves fed, was nearly as big as she was. Luciana could no more "pick it up" than she could budge it with her big toe. The wind couldn't even move it. It easily weighed more than one hundred pounds. Time and Mateo's dust storms had partially buried in the ground.

" _No puedo, abuelita. Es demasiado pesado."_ (I can't, Abuelita. It's too heavy.)

" _Para mí, sí. Para Alejandro, para Joaquin, hombres grandes y fuertes. Sí, es demasiado pesado. Pero para ti, Luciana. No es demasiado pesado."_ (For me, yes. For Alejandro, for Joaquin—big, strong men—yes, too heavy. But for you, Luciana. No, it is not too heavy.)

Abuelita knew this because she had seen it with her own two eyes. She had witnessed what Luciana was capable of "cuando el espíritu te mueve", _when the spirit moved her_ , as Abuelita liked to call it. When the spirit moved her (or, when she was angry enough) Luciana could levitate items and hurl them, at the wall, across long distances, and once, at the head of a boy who had been teasing her. Thankfully, she'd only thrown a bouncy ball at him and not a rock. From then on, though, Abuelita had taken control to focus Luciana's rare gift.

No one really knew where her biotics came from. She was the only one on the moon who showed any aptitude for its usage. Abuelita believed its origin was extrasolar, picked up somewhere along their journey from Earth to Mateo. Someone in their lineage had inherited the galaxy's most precious gift, and it had lain dormant until deposited into her granddaughter's DNA.

Luciana had been afraid of her burgeoning biotics. She associated them with anger, unpleasantness, and therefore, it was a bad thing to have. But Abuelita didn't look upon her ability with negativity. She had seen it for what it was, and called it so—a gift. If for no one else, Luciana tried to readjust her thinking and lift the cogwheel for Abuelita.

It took many weeks, and many long hours of concentration and frustration so bad it made her cry, but eventually Luciana had been able to pick it up. It levitated only for a few memorable seconds before she dropped it back down upon the dry ground with a heavy thump, but she had fully lifted it out of the dirt after years of a slow burial. It was the best day Luciana could ever remember of her life on Mateo. Abuelita had been so proud.

Jack had been too, when Luciana first recounted the story to her. She must have told that story to Jack about a zillion times just for the chance to experience Abuelita's pride again. It never got old, not even when Jack asked her to recount it to new arrivals at Grissom Academy.

Looking down at the chalice, that old memory worked an idea into Luciana's head. Many years had passed since that day, and her biotics were now stronger than ever. Luciana had begun to hone them the day the batarian slavers came to Mateo (she never liked to think about how many she killed that day), and though she'd kept her ability a secret for as long as she could at the orphanage, her abilities grew in scope and capacity during her short time there. When Grissom Academy came calling (in particular, Dr. Kahlee Sanders, who had come in search of gifted young ones at the orphanage like herself), offering scholarships into the Ascension Project, Luciana had jumped at the chance. Instructors like Jack had sharpened her abilities like the fine edge of a blade. She was capable of so much more than she had been that first day in the dry, hot wind of Mateo, standing before Abuelita in her rocking chair.

Luciana reached for the chalice, and despite her pain, it obeyed her glowing command. Sacrilegious a move or not, the chalice slipped into the palm of her hand like it belonged there. Looking at it shimmering in the aberrant light, Luciana had another idea.

"Ensign Rodriguez?"

Luciana looked up to see Rentola and his two soldiers appear from within the nave, guns drawn, ready to fight. There were shocked faces on the lot of them. They must have heard the clatter of the chalice. Who couldn't have?

"What was that noise?"

"I dropped this. Sorry."

Rentola looked at her like she had lost her mind, but then he lost the expression with a shake of his head. "You're in no condition to be standing, Ensign."

"I know, but I had to find you."

Rentola waved his men to her side and each one of them took an arm. "Take her back to the baptistry. She needs to rest—"

"No." Luciana struggled against them, blanching at a searing pain in her gut. Little beads of sweat had begun to pop out along her brow. "Please," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "Commander, I need to speak to you."

"Hold," Rentola said to his men. "What is wrong?"

Black spots began to dot Rentola's face. Luciana tried to shake the nauseating visual sensation away. She was going to faint if she didn't pull herself together. Time was running out.

Little power remained in the cathedral. What light they had to see by came mostly from the illumination of candles meant for use in worship. Sacrilegious too, probably, but they needed light. The rest of the power had been siphoned to maximize the shields. Less than five minutes ago, in the space of time it took for Luciana to march from her place beside Jasper to knocking down the chalice and lessening their chances, that power had flickered.

"You saw it," she said to Rentola. "Tell me you saw it."

Rentola's black eyes, marked with blue specks like stars in the expanse of space, lowered. Luciana didn't have to describe it. He knew exactly what she meant.

"Yes," he said with a reluctant nod. "We've done all we can to shore up the shields, but somehow they are draining the power little by little. I fear there is little help for us now."

Fear had a way of waking one up. Like the sound of a scream in the dead of night. That's the way it had started on Mateo the night the slavers came. A gut-wrenching scream had pulled her out of a dead sleep, and then Abuelita had pulled her out of bed before little Luciana could unleash her own scream. Abuelita had saved her life that night, but she could not save adult Luciana now.

The black spots disappeared. It was time for Luciana to focus. "How long do we have?"

"It won't be long now." Rentola's voice was unsteady.

Luciana ignored her pain. "Okay, um, how much do you know about this cathedral?"

He frowned and looked at his two soldiers. They shrugged. "I know very little of human architecture."

Luciana hung her shoulders. "That makes two of us."

Rentola didn't remark on that. Finding a human who knew little of what it meant to be human wasn't a rare occurrence. Not every species was born and raised on their home planet. Luciana was no exception. What little she knew, she had learned from Abuelita.

"But one thing I do know about these old buildings, especially in cities like London that have seen war before…there will be a hidden place, a bunker of some kind, some place underground that we can hide. We just have to find it."

"Of course," Rentola said with an excited nod. "Major Kirrahe has spoken of Earth's past skirmishes, such as The Blitz. But we don't have a lot of time to start searching. And we have the colonel to think of, not to mention your own injuries."

Luciana made herself look back into the baptistry where Jasper lay on the floor. He'd turned his head at an odd angle to look at them, trying to hear their whispered discussion in the cathedral's tunnel of silence. If he could, he didn't appear to like the current flow of their conversation, or the look in Luciana's eyes. She was sizing him up, the way she had all those years ago in the middle of a Mateo dust storm. Jasper might be tall, but he was lean. He wasn't heavier than a cogwheel.

Turning back to Rentola, she said, "That's where I'm going to need you and your men's help."

"How do you mean?"

"If there is a bunker of some sort here, the colonel can help us find it."

"Of course, this city is the colonel's home, isn't it? His knowledge should far surpass that of Major Kirrahe's."

Luciana took a deep breath. The pain was fighting back. "There's just one problem. I think I can move him, but the colonel has convinced himself that when the husks come, he's going to give up his life to save ours."

Rentola glanced at the colonel, saw the explosives on his belt, and understood immediately. Luciana didn't like the grave look in his expansive eyes. "That may be our only chance, Ensign."

His comment shot her back to the slave raid, the sound of gunfire, the screams, and the growling voices of batarians. Abuelita and several other of the older ones had been secretly gathering up stray children (children whose parents had been slaughtered in an attempt to save them), and were leading them toward the underground bunker outside the village. The secret wasn't a secret for long. Batarians had closed in from all sides. Too far away to shoot, but not far away to plant warning shots in their path. Some of the older ones, afraid to die at the hands of the batarians, were arguing whether they should give the children up to save their own skins. Fear can make even the best of people turn cold.

But Abuelita had put her foot down. She might not have been king or queen or president, but the people all looked to her when the final decision had to be made. When Abuelita said NO, the discussion was over. _"Morimos salvando a los niños o morimos intentándolo."_

Luciana mimicked the voice she remembered from her childhood. "No. If he dies, then we all die, but if we're going to live, it's going to take all of us."

A crack, like the sound of a needle splintering ice, reached their ears. They turned to see one husk claw poking through the glass above the colonel's head. It shimmered blue with the draining mass effect shield, and then it disappeared.

"It would appear, our chances have just grown slimmer. What's your idea, Ensign?"

Luciana met Jasper's eyes across the distance. He looked almost apologetic, as if he had let her down, as if all this was his fault. If she could have imbued him with her dwindling sense of hope, with the strength of Abuelita, she would have. Instead, she gave him a smile.

 **EEE**

 _ **O**_ ne three-fingered salarian hand, tightened into a fist, went up into the air. All of them came to a skittering halt. With his other hand, Kirrahe held the comm to his ear.

Jack didn't like it. Something felt off. An uneasy sensation was growing in the pit of her gut, as it had that time inside the Collector ship. She knew something wasn't right then, and it didn't feel any better now. A fist in the air meant stop. Stopping was bad. They were almost there. Why would he halt them now? Behind them, the growls and groans were getting louder. Pretty soon the bastards would start firing, and there was no cover. They were sitting ducks.

Grunt had the same idea. "Zaeed, watch our asses."

"On it." Stowing his faithful sidekick Jessie away for now, Zaeed hefted the sniper and watched the scope. "Nothing on the scope yet, but they're coming."

This wasn't some Illusive Man bullshit. These were Reapers. They didn't think like a human bent on dominating the galaxy. Much like the Collectors, the Reapers aligned their thoughts strategically, maneuvering their troops to gain the best tactical advantage, wiping out the weaker systems first and saving the more advanced, the better armed for last. They weren't bent on domination. The Reapers sought only annihilation.

Jack couldn't take it anymore. She marched to Kirrahe, Prangley close on her heels. "What's happening, Major?"

Kirrahe shook his pebbly head. "I can't…it's hard to understand. The transmission is garbled."

"Well shit, let everyone hear it."

The major flipped an indiscernible switch. No one had mentally prepared for the burst of static in the inner ear but Jack. There were mixed curses at the sudden intrusion. At their backs, Zaeed only cursed the distraction. But they all heard when the first voice came through.

" _Hammer over…_ (static) _…need reinforce…_ (static) _…"_

A clearer voice came over the comm. This one needed no introduction. _"To all ground fleets—this is Admiral Hackett. Several Sovereign-class Reapers have broken away from Sword. Repeat—several Sovereign-class Reapers, including Harbinger, have broken away from the battle with Sword."_

Jacob's eyes went wide. "Harbinger? Son of a bitch."

" _Their trajectory leads them straight to you, Hammer. We are sending—"_

" _L E T, this is Hammer. Come in!"_

"— _air support. Do everything in your power—"_

" _I repeat, L E T come in!"_

"— _make it to that beam."_

"So, it begins."

The words were those of Samara. If Jack lived through this night, if she lived to see herself turn old and grey (and the thought was none too pleasant), she would never forget those words nor the sound of Samara's voice. Calm, reverent, as though worshipping their last hours together, but most of all hopeful. When Samara felt Jack's gaze upon her, she smiled.

"L E T here. This is Major Kirrahe. Come in, Hammer!"

" _L E T, we are overrun. Reapers inbound. We need your distraction, and we need it now or we're not going to—"_

A burst of static. A bugle horn of cacophonous sound. A scream. And then nothing.

Silence reigned above the approaching horde as the gravity of what was happening above ground sunk in. Samara was right. It had begun—the end, and it could easily fall in either side's favor. Right now, their side didn't look so good.

Grunt was the first one to break the silence. "What the hell are we still doing down here?!" His massive bulk thundered toward Kirrahe. "We should be up there with them, fighting!"

Jack stood ready to stand between them if she had to, but good ol' Pebbles had the situation well in hand. Having taken no insult, he calmly said, "The move against Hammer escalated far quicker than I expected. Grunt, can you release the shields on the artifacts already placed?"

Grunt growled. "Not from here. I need to get topside."

"We need to go, people," Zaeed called over his shoulder. "I'm starting to see movement."

A breeze, caused by the salarian troops that moved to flank Zaeed, ruffled Jack's ponytail. Scorpion pistols at the ready, they added their firepower to those that had already taken a stance, Prangley included. Jack was proud of him. He continued to show little fear. He would make a great soldier someday…if they lived that long. A lingering dread in the back of Jack's mind whispered that this was their final moments, their do or die time.

"Damn," Pebbles said. "I realize the issue, Massani. We are, however, in something of a conundrum."

"We don't have time to figure out salarian puzzles," Grunt said. Jack wondered if he even knew what the word conundrum meant.

"We've lost the element of surprise. The enemy clearly knows where we are."

"Simplify!"

Jack interceded, giving Grunt an unexpected push that knocked him back a few steps. Only Jack could get away with it without retaliation. His respect for her power, packed into such a small package, knew no bounds. "What he means, hard head, is if we rush topside into Westminster Station, we'll be ambushed."

Pebbles nodded in agreement. "We need another way up."

"Well, why the hell didn't you just say so!" Grunt marched to the salarian with missile duty. "Gemme that bag," he grumbled. There were a few uncomfortable clanks as the missile holster shifted hands. Grunt loaded the launcher strapped to his bulky shoulders without waiting for permission. "You want the element of surprise? I'll give you the element of surprise. Everybody get outta the way!"

No one questioned it. They just moved. A whole ton of topside was about to come down on their heads if they didn't. Grunt pumped the launcher, aimed upward at a forty-five-degree angle and pressed the trigger.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading, and for your patience. Will try to get the next chapter out Wednesday.**


	22. All For ONE, Part VI

_**MASS EFFECT: ONE**_

* * *

 _"Amonkira, Lord of Hunters,_

 _grant that my hands be steady,_

 _my aim true,_

 _and my feet swift._

 _And should the worst come to pass..."_

 _~Thane Krios~_

* * *

 **All For ONE**

 _ **Part VI**_

 **Before Endgame**

 _ **T**_ housands of years ago, long before either he or Aria were born, someone mapped the Citadel. Whether they did it on foot or electronically through digital mapping, Bailey couldn't say. The Citadel had much history that he had never bothered to investigate (he had its present existence to care for), but he had no doubt it took years to map, possibly decades. Thus, somewhere, deep in a vault inside the Citadel Tower were schematics that mapped every single place on the station, from the Tower to the tips of the wards.

Though he had heard of these maps, Bailey had never seen them, nor was he now in search of them. But somewhere along the line, he figured someone could have told him keepers had lifts hidden inside the Citadel. Kind of made sense, though. How the hell else did they get up there? He'd never seen one riding a lift. He just took their presence inside the Tower for granted. Everyone did. Of all the places on the Citadel that Bailey knew like the back of his hand, the keepers' box lift wasn't one of them.

Resting his head against a nondescript metal wall, Bailey caught his breath. There was nothing special about the box they were in. The keeper had a little workstation that retracted from the wall like an ironing board and that was it. No other amenities, like music or illumination. If it weren't for the keeper station and Aria's omni-tool, they would be in the dark.

Bailey looked Aria over. She was beat. How she thought she was going to take on the Illu… ( _Forget it; I'm not calling him that. It reduces the manic to the level of a comic book archvillain, and he's a lot more sinister than that. He needs a normal name, something I can relate to.)_ How Aria thought she was going to take on TIM _(perfect)_ when she hardly had the strength to take on an adjutant, he didn't know. Bailey was starting to lose the point of going after him in the first place.

"Are you all right?"

Aria looked up from her omni-tool, casting Bailey an aggrieved glare. "Would you stop asking me that?"

Bailey smirked. "You're injured, Aria. That's what people do. You are still a people, aren't you?"

Her glare went from aggrieved to tolerant. "I'm fine."

"Any time now, you're gonna figure out that I'm on your side in this. The line between cop and criminal becomes blurred when you're in the middle of being annihilated."

"I'm not a criminal. I'm a businessman."

"Businesswoman, you mean."

"Business _person_ ," Aria came back with a tired grin. "The line between genders becomes blurred when one is an asari."

Bailey sighed and mumbled, "You can say that again." He ignored Aria's glare and nodded at the keeper. "So, you think this keeper's leader is…?"

"None other than the Illusive Man, and our friend here is going to take us right to him. Aren't you, Little Fucker?"

If he weren't so winded, Bailey might have laughed. He could imagine Aria scratching the keeper behind the ear the way she spoke that last sentence. "I thought you weren't going to name it."

"Well, I wasn't planning on it, but it did right by us."

"What about Tim?"

Aria frowned. "Tim?"

"Yeah. Calling him The Illusive Man is just stupid."

Aria grinned. "What about him?"

"Does he really think he can control the Reapers somehow?"

"He can," Aria said, the playfulness gone from her voice.

"Okay, say that's true." Bailey steeled himself for an argument. "You're injured—"

" _I'm fine."_

"Face it or not, Aria, you're not at the top of your game. Neither am I. What makes you think we have what it takes to take him on? He's hardly even human anymore. Didn't you see him?"

"Yes, I saw him," Aria said with a narrowing of her eyes. "He's crawling with Reaper tech. He's basically becoming a husk with a highly intelligent brain. But he's still human, Owen, with human fallibilities. Reaper tech can't take that away from him."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" He didn't know if she was making a point or being insulting.

"It means there's a flaw in the Illusive Man's theory."

"Yeah?"

"There always is."

Bailey looked down at the rifle in his hand. What he had seen on the dock didn't look too fallible to him. What could his rifle do against someone so powerful? He looked up only to see Aria give the notion of his weapon a smirk. That's when he understood. They were going about this the wrong way. Fallibility had nothing to do with power. One can have all the power in the world and still screw things up royally.

Attempting a Citadel coup, for instance, with the assistance of a conniving flake like Udina, or thinking your personal assassin can best anyone, even a terminally ill drell. Even worse, believing you can ever one up Aria T'Loak. But Tim's biggest screw up of all time had to be underestimating Commander Shepard, and thinking he could control her just because he'd saved her life.

Fallibility had everything to do with the mind. Taking Tim on wasn't going to involve bullets or a grand show of power. They would need a different sort of weapon to peel back his layers of human arrogance and reveal the impetuous man behind it.

The moving keeper-lift jerked and hissed.

"We're slowing," Aria whispered, getting to her knees. "Get ready."

Bailey checked his weapon. They may not need their weapons against _him_ , but that didn't mean there weren't other things out there—wherever the hell they were going.

The keeper tapped away at its station, many fingers doing multiple jobs until its console tucked away back into the wall. With Aria's omni-tool off, the box was now totally dark. Bailey wished for the door to open onto another dimly lit tunnel. He'd give anything for more light on their situation, but his wish was not granted. When the door opened, there was no tunnel, and hardly any light. What light came through to illuminate the interior was blood red and garish. Aria was forced to scuttle backward when something that had been leaning up against the door fell inward, followed by an unholy smell that hit them both in the face.

"What the hell is that?" Bailey said, shielding his nose and mouth with one hand while shining a light with the other. The beam fell on a bloody human face, frozen in a rictus of fear. Breath went cold as death in Bailey's lungs. "Oh shit, that's an Alliance officer. Look at his uniform."

Aria pushed him toward the door. "Out. Get out." The keeper was walking over the body. They could too.

"What the hell is an Alliance officer doing up here?"

Squeezing past the body and out the keeper door, Bailey found he could rise to his full height. They weren't inside a tunnel, but that didn't make the situation they found themselves in any better. The stench of death and rot churned his stomach.

"What kind of nightmare is this?" Bailey's voice was as hushed as the grave they'd just stepped into.

The room wasn't big. Six, maybe seven meters in length. Less than half that in width. Bailey had been inside the Tower more times than he could count, and he had never seen this place before. But the room itself was not its most striking feature—it was the human bodies. They were piled one on top the other like refuse, lining either side of the room, forming a nice, clean channel for which to walk through. Bailey shined his light on them.

They weren't all soldiers. Some of them looked like civilians. He shifted his light.

"Holy God." Bailey felt his knees weaken.

Aria came to his side. "What is it?"

Bailey pointed, but turned away. "It's…it's a child…a human child." His light had caught the face momentarily, but there was no second-guessing that sight. Eyes glazed over. Body twisted and bloody. It would live with him forever.

"Pull yourself together, Owen. We have a job to do."

Bailey hadn't noticed the color heighten on Aria's face at the sight, or the dry click at the back of her throat when she swallowed. All he heard were her words.

"You heartless bitch." He wanted to push her face to face with that dead child and make her look until she felt something. "What if these were your people?"

"These are my people, asshole. You think there aren't millions of dead asari children littering the ground on Thessia, and right here on the Citadel?"

Bailey closed his eyes, rubbed his temples. All he could see were the faces of his children. "I don't know what to think right now. I can't—I can't do this."

Aria yanked his arm, turned him to face her. "Think, damn you! Look at the bodies!"

"No."

"Look at them!"

Aria shined her light, not caring how many children's faces glared lifelessly back at them. Her light illuminated uniformed soldiers, men and women in civilian clothing, teenagers in school uniforms, little kids in their jumpers and dresses, even infants in their swaddling clothes.

"You're going to look, Owen, just like Bray had to look. You're going to open your eyes and you're going to think. The Citadel houses lifeforms from all parts of the galaxy, but what do you see?"

Bailey looked. As hard as it was, he made himself look, and he realized what it was she wanted him to see. "They're all human."

There wasn't an asari, turian, krogan, salarian or any other species among them. The understanding was beginning to click in his head like puzzle pieces coming together. Something Shepard told him. It wasn't in any record or briefing log from her court-martial a couple of years ago. She had plenty time in those days to tell him directly of her experiences on the Collector ship. Stories of human bodies piled up like cordwood, no more than kindling, stored up to be processed in the creation of a new Reaper.

"The question is," Aria said. "Where are they coming from? How did they all get up here?"

Bailey was about to say she had read his mind when a bright light flashed at the end of the corridor where darkness once enshrouded. They shielded their eyes, momentarily blinded, almost missing the sight of something exploding from the light, tumbling end over end until it came to a jumbled rest in the center of the channel of bodies. Only then did they notice the strange looking sculpture at the other end of the room. A configuration of five pointed spires that nearly reached the ceiling with a red glowing energy pad at its center. It's what illuminated the room and the other keepers moving toward whatever had exploded from the light at its center.

Aria and Bailey both shined their light. Another human body, no more alive than the rest of them. The keepers picked up the body and lay it on the side with the others.

"That's how," Bailey said, pointing at the device, whatever it was. "Could they be coming from Earth?"

"It's likely, considering where the Citadel stopped." Aria's eyes fell upon one of the keepers, currently snipping at the clothing of female in a pink dress. "They transport them here to be…processed…and the keepers are helping."

Aria raised her pistol, meaning to shoot one of them, but Bailey laid a gentle hand on her wrist. "No point," he said. "Another one will replace it."

Suddenly, they were standing on moving ground. Bailey and Aria had to hold onto one another to keep from falling over. The entire room had begun to shift. In the dim lighting, a wall lifted maw-like, revealing nothing but darkness and bellowing a putrescent steam. The bodies lined against it tumbled in, swallowed whole like food for a monster. Bailey thought of the duct rats that had disappeared over the years and were never found. Just as soon as it happened, the walls realigned themselves and the room came to a stop.

Before either of them could react, the swooshing sound of an automatic door drew their attention. An octagonally shaped door had split down its middle and was opening, revealing another similarly dim corridor ahead. Their own keeper stood at its side, waiting for its next command.

"Well, well," Aria said. "I guess if another keeper were to replace that one, it wouldn't be Little Fucker. Let's get the hell out of this place." Aria stowed her weapon and encouraged Bailey to do the same. "I've got a feeling we're not going to need them."

 **EEE**

 _ **R** inging._

From head to toe, Jack's head rang like a clashing cymbal. Her world was a never-ending gong. Nothing else but sound felt real anymore. Even the ground beneath her had become unreal. Where were the hundreds of year's worth of sediment built up from lack of human traffic noted earlier? The old tracks were now littered with rock and dirt. Jack picked up a handful. It was raw, clean, untouched for who knew how long.

Where the hell was it coming from?

With an audible _crack_ , like the retort of a rifle, the pieces started popping back together. Synapses that had been shaken loose were pulling back into place and firing. Things forgotten in the last few crazy hours were remembered—St. James Park Station, the tube, running, followed, communiqué, distress, and finally, stupid ass Grunt firing a missile over their heads.

Jack was lying on the ground, a strange light from above washing over her, when two big hands grabbed her and pulled her to her feet.

"Get up, Jack! We've gotta move!"

She would have recognized the merc's accent anywhere. She remembered Shepard. _Don't let anything happen to Jack._ She remembered briefly thinking, _Mamma Shepard was at it again, babying her kids like they hadn't grown up and left the roost,_ but she could hardly remember what happened after Grunt pulled the trigger on the launcher. She knew the explosion was coming. She knew it was going to bust her ears, but she hadn't been prepared for it. None of them had. Even the salarians were walking around with hands on their heads, trying to steady their shaken brains. How many times had Grunt fired that damn launcher?

Enough times for her to see nothing but destruction. The tunnel had become a playground of rock and dirt. Illumination from above hit on a patch of grass at her feet. Still underground, the sight was so weird, Jack almost laughed. That was until instinct had her scanning the ruin of the tunnel for the only one whose life she could still protect—Prangley—but he was nowhere to be seen.

A tug on her arm. Zaeed was pulling her toward the center of the explosion where Grunt's improvised exit had built a mound of Earth and rock upon which to climb to the surface. Jack twisted out of his grip. The son of a bitch kept trying to protect her like she was a damn child!

"Get off me, Massani!" But Jack was no different than Shepard. Like any good mother, she had only one concern. She wasn't going to leave her own behind. "Where's Prangley?"

A high-pitched scream. Husks had appeared from the darkness of the tunnel. They jumped from walls and ceilings. Two of them landed upon a salarian STG agent like feral dogs, ripping and biting. Zaeed opened fire, but green salarian blood had already begun to flow.

Movement to her left. Deafened and dazed, Jack pivoted, her reflexes still sharp. Her pistol met an inhuman face and she wasn't about to waste any sympathy for it. She fired. Above and to the right, she buried her bullets into several moving objects. But the husks kept coming. There seemed to be no end.

"Go! Go!" Zaeed yelled to the remaining salarians over her head. There wasn't a human among them. No dark brown hair. No Grissom Academy uniform. Just salarian horns and huge, frightened eyes. Just as Jack was about to run headlong into the darkness looking for him, a swath of light cut a path into the darkness of the tube. All it found were husks as far as her eye could see. In the second that she saw it, Jack couldn't breathe, her stomach dropped, and then it was dark again. The fight went out of her and she let Zaeed pull her up the mound of dirt and debris.

Jack had never been to London in her life. She had not seen it in its pristine condition before the Reapers came, but the scene above was no less horrific than the one below. It lacked none of the effect it might have on one who knew the city since childhood.

They stood in the center of what might have once been a park. Square, not expansive, with hulled out and smoking spires of wood that used to be trees dotting its corners. Three foundations of stone where statues used to stand. Two of them had been obliterated. The third, a statue of a bulky human had been decapitated. He used to wear an overcoat and walked with a cane. Now, the chubby iron head lay partially imbedded in the ground. Furrowed, angry brows were seemingly insulted at the indignation. _"How dare they?"_ he might have said were he alive to witness the destruction.

Jack didn't know the man any more than she knew the city, but how dare they, indeed. All around her, she saw nothing but fire and destruction, and the fog rolling in off the river turned the scene into something dreamlike. Buildings old and new, some no more than twenty years old, some aged by hundreds of years. Their once proud medieval gothic spires that used to point heavenward had been reduced to rubble. Pebbles' reasoning had been spot on. The very building they would have been trying to surface from, not one hundred meters away, was no longer standing. They would have been trapped. The lone building that stood like a virulent beacon in this long night was one Jack had only ever seen in pictures—Big Ben.

Two more years would have seen Big Ben reach its three hundred and thirtieth anniversary. It stood big as life amidst a sea of destruction. If what Hammer and Commander Shepard had in mind worked during their final push to stop the Reapers, the iconic skyscraper—an age-old symbol of human ingenuity and might—may yet make it through the night.

That's as far as Jack's hope extended. She knew the scope of their importance in the final push was basic distraction. Take what heat they could from Hammer, pull as many Reaper forces in their direction, so they could do their job. The Leviathan Enthrallment Team had become the last resort, the epitome of the ill-fated bad guy you see in all those action vids who redeems himself right at the end, who distracts the monster and takes the hit so everyone else can live.

Jack looked over her shoulder, ignoring the screeching cries that came from the gaping hole in the ground of Parliament Square Gardens, over what buildings still clung to their foundations, past the rubble of Westminster Abby upon (which stood the towering dead Reaper cannon they had seen from a distance near the cathedral), and into the sky. Above her, the white sword of light that plunged from the Citadel, penetrating the clouds and stabbing into Earth, was closer than she had previously seen it. The night around it detonated with pockets of intermittent yellow luminance. Explosions. The white light flickered once, twice, inundating like a snake swallowing its prey.

Jack's eyes took it all in mere seconds before Zaeed pushed her forward. He was screaming something she could hardly hear above the screech of husks. He raised his rifle, popped shots at marauders that had taken cover behind the statueless foundations. Jack followed suit. One took a hit between the eyes, but not before it grazed her shields. They had no cover here out in the open. All corners of destruction birthed monsters of unearthly shapes and sizes. Mewls, growls, hideous wails and beastly roars converged from all sides. They were being surrounded

The ground shook, and then a blinding light and gale-force winds hit them followed by the roar of a gunship streaking overhead. It slashed a beam of light across the ground, momentarily blinding Jack and reminding her of the light she had seen penetrating inside the blast zone. She didn't have to hear the static crackling in her ear or the command to run for cover to know who it was. She had only to see the fog split like contrails and marauders dropping like flies in a hail of bullets to know that Miranda had come to the rescue in the last hour, and Jack had no doubt it was Mamma Shepard who had sent her favorite cheerleader as backup.

The gunship shot over a centuries-old building whose only remaining structures were the watchtowers on each corner. It streaked high into the air, executed a flawless three-sixty turn and came back to lay a suppressing fire in the opposite direction. The ground shook again.

The comm crackled. "Commander! Get your people to the clock tower. Take cover!"

Through shifting patches of fog, Pebbles led the way across a debris-strewn street toward Big Ben, running over grass that had seen better days. The ground continued to shake. This wasn't like the moment the Cheerleader swooped in and saved them from the harvester. It felt like the end of everything was coming soon. Even with Miranda up there plowing the field, all Jack could think was _"last stand."_ They would make it to the clock tower, deploy their final artifacts for however long they might last, and wait for the final influx to come in and tear them apart. As good as Miranda was in the decommissioned Cerberus gunship, she wasn't a miracle worker. She wouldn't be able to hold the Reapers off of them forever.

Jack's hope had begun to wane. It no longer washed over her like a cold glass of water. She knew if she lost it, if she started to give up, only death would follow. She had to keep Shepard and her mission in the forefront of her mind. She had to keep her promise and not let Shepard down. Those truths were all Jack had to cling to…until the river fog hugging the ground mysteriously parted and revealed the last of her kids.

Running beside Grunt was Prangley, firing at oncoming cannibals. What little hope Jack had came rushing back, and she shot a shockwave that tossed cannibals into the air like paper.

Blue light pulled Jack's attention momentarily to the right. Samara and Jacob's biotics were playing out toward a host of Reaper troops tearing up the ground in their direction, while behind them Miranda unloaded on the husks coming from underground. Jack added her own bullets into the mix before her booted feet met pavement. They were crossing the road.

Bullets skimmed overhead. One nicked her shields. Jack saw the offender, caught it in a pull field and screamed, _"Die, bitch!"_ She shot it squarely between the eyes.

"Get to cover! Get to cover!" The gunship screamed overhead, plowing the ground behind them with bullets as if in an effort to get them moving faster. Chunks of concrete pelted the back of Jack's shields.

Ahead was an open iron fence held up by stone towers. A gate, thick, barely penetrable to human forces stood between them. Each member of the enthrallment team passed through one by one. It was all that stood between them and the ever coalescing wave that was coming. It was not going to hold. Not for long. Still, they closed the gates and sealed the lock with an omni-tool blowtorch while Jack and Prangley threw up barriers to shield them from enemy fire.

The ground shook again, and this time there was no mistaking its source. A thousand horn blasts pierced through the night, over the endless stream of gunfire and the scream of Miranda's gunship.

"Reaper!" came her call through the comm. "Commander! Destroyer-class Reaper inbound."

In the distance, over the rubble of buildings still crumbling in the wake of its passing, Jack caught the sight of a fantail raised high into the sky. Not Sovereign class, like Harbinger, but a Destroyer. Big enough and strong enough to take out a small city on its own. It hadn't been the gunship shaking the ground after all.

The salarian sealing shut the gate pulled up his omni-tool, and Kirrahe cried, "To the clock tower! Grunt, release the artifacts."

Seconds ticked. Jack felt as if she had entered a dream. Eighty meters of concrete, grass and a hedge of wilted trees sat between them and the entrance to the clock tower. Something inside begged her to run as fast as she could, to take Prangley's hand and get him the hell out of there, but her feet wouldn't move. Grunt stood in the center of mayhem, tinkering with his omni-tool, while husks topped the gate. Grinning, he dared them to take him on all at once.

The plan, if one could call it that, was to get the artifacts to the top of the clock tower and set their trap, drawing Reapers and their own kind against themselves. The plan had once again failed. They drew them without having to try. Now, he had to improvise. With one artifact in the bell tower of the cathedral, the second one atop the Wellington Arch, and a third perched on The Ritz, the fourth should have gone on the roof of St. James Park Station, but that plan had been scrapped in the ambush. The final two sat shielded and protected inside two backpacks—one with Grunt and the other strapped to Zaeed's back. They were staying behind to deploy them merely as lures.

Two years ago, Jack had stood side by side with these very people against similarly insurmountable odds. She wouldn't leave them behind then, so there was no way in hell she'd leave them behind now. Even as Kirrahe and his men ran for the tower, Jack searched out and found Samara and Jacob in the chaos. The justicar, radiating a solemn confidence, read Jack's intent without the use of words and nodded. For Jacob, the decision came with a second of deliberation. He had a wife, and a child on the way. But, in the end, he nodded as well. He had to. To win the future of all unborn children, they must stand.

Jack didn't look behind when Kirrahe and his men returned to flank them. She felt a swell of gratitude, but she wouldn't turn her gaze from Prangley. As Miranda's jet screamed overhead, mowing down another oncoming wave of monsters, the last of the Normandy's "suicide squad" stood ready to fight the Reapers as a team, as they had two years ago on a Collector ship. Beside her, Jack felt the ghosts of Mordin Solis, Thane Krios, and Legion as palpably as she felt Prangley's presence at her side.

The ground shook, bullets whizzed past. Jack had but one last second to let Prangley know what his stance at her side meant. He answered with a wordless nod. By the look on his face, he was thinking the same thing…

This was it. No matter how the game played out, for good or bad, this was the end.

* * *

 **Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Thanks for reading.**


	23. All For ONE, Part VII

_**MASS EFFECT: ONE**_

* * *

 _"Amonkira, Lord of Hunters,_

 _grant that my hands be steady,_

 _my aim true,_

 _and my feet swift._

 _And should the worst come to pass..."_

 _~Thane Krios~_

* * *

 **All For ONE**

 _ **Part VII**_

 **Before Endgame**

 _ **"T**_ he Crypt Chapel of Saint Peter. That's what you're looking for."

Luciana didn't like the wary gaze Jasper slid between her and Rentola. They must seem like imposing giants to him. If she could have knelt at his side, talked to him at his level as they had in moments past, she would have. Luciana knew better than to try, though. Once down, she wouldn't be able to get back up. Keeping upright, on her own two feet, wasn't any easier.

"Where do we find it?" Rentola asked.

"Behind the high alter, beneath the retrochoir." Jasper wearily shook his head. "It's not a defensible position, otherwise I would have mentioned it. The only thing between you and a hundred husks would be a few iron gates."

Rentola sighed, rubbed the back of his spindly head. "This isn't going to work, Ensign. We need to think of something else."

"No," she said, gritting her teeth against the growing ache in her belly. "We don't have time. The crypt is our only option."

Rentola stopped pacing and locked eyes with the colonel. "It's not our _only_ option."

"He's right, Luciana," Jasper said before she could protest. "Go to the crypt. Prepare to make your stand. Let me give you a fighting chance." He touched his good hand to the explosives on his belt.

"Forget it, Jasper. I won't leave you here to die. You're coming with us."

"I am not." Voice raised, he said it with the set and determined voice of one in command. He had already made his decision. "I am going to stay right here, and while the four of you get to safety, I will draw every one of them to my position. I can dwindle their numbers by more than half. You'll have a chance."

"A chance at what? To live for a few hours, a few _minutes_ more?"

An ache tore across her abdomen. Luciana cried out, her knees weakened. If Rentola hadn't been there to stable her, she would have keeled over. She heard Jasper call her name in concern. He didn't have her hand to hold onto, but he found her calf. As though his touch were a healing balm, the ache passed and Luciana could hold her own again. The second time, she might not be so lucky. Whatever was wrong, it was getting worse.

"Are you all right, Ensign?"

"I'm fine," she said, giving herself a quick dose of medi-gel. They didn't have much left, but what supplies they had she would need to get Jasper to safety.

"No, she isn't," Jasper said. "You need to get her below, Commander. Do it now."

Rentola took her arm, but Luciana, stubborn as her _abuela_ , shrugged out of it. "I said you're coming with us."

Jasper squeezed her ankle. "Luciana, please. My time is done. Let me give you what I have left."

A crack in the glass above drew the attention of everyone but the little girl from Mateo. She had focused her attention elsewhere. She could hear the creak of a rocking chair, the tap-tap of a rickety wooden cane against the marble floor, and the admonition of an old woman.

 _Hazlo, Luciana. Para ti, nada es imposible._

"I die saving you…or I die trying." Tears of pain, for herself and for Jasper, slipped from Luciana's eyes when her biotics enveloped him.

 **EEE**

 _ **A**_ ria didn't like the clomp of her heels on the metallic surface. Bailey's rubber soles, while quieter, weren't much better. The Illusive Man would hear them coming from a mile away, and they'd only taken several tentative steps out into the corridor.

"Why does this corridor feel like one long tunnel of doom?"

It was on the tip of her tongue to shush the human, but then she thought, why bother. _He_ already knew they were coming, and likely knew she would stop at nothing to find him, so what would it matter if they spoke.

"Probably because it is," Aria said. She didn't like the look of this area of the Citadel any more than he did. "Where are we?"

Bailey looked at her as if she were crazy. "How the hell should I know? Never knew this place existed. It's not on any map that I know of."

"Great." Aria flicked on her flashlight again and illuminated the corridor ahead of them. It was long, but she thought she caught the reflection of another door ahead, and the keeper was headed right for it. "Well, looks like Little Fucker knows where he's going. Explain to me again why I keep you around."

"Because I've saved your ass countless times in one day."

"I allowed you to."

Bailey chuckled, shook his head. "Can't be because you enjoy my scintillating personality."

"You're joking, right? Batarians have more personality than you."

Aria winced. She didn't expect to feel a twinge of hurt at the memory of Bray. Even Alto, as brave as he was to try and take on Cerberus in her absence from Omega, hadn't been as loyal as Bray. Casting a glance at Bailey, she saw him looking at her in the dim red light. He'd seen. If he asked her if she was all right one more time…

"I meant elcor, but even hanar have more personality than you."

"So, it is true."

"What?"

"You're crazy about me."

Aria stopped in her tracks. Ahead, the keeper had found the end of the corridor, and a keeper station. It was busily working its little hands across its holographic surface. She had no idea what it was up to—maybe trying to open the door—and right now she was too confounded by Bailey's comment to care.

Amused, and somewhat bemused, Aria cast him a sideways glance. She didn't know where it came from—perhaps from the ageless soul inside who still saw herself as a youngling, fresh from her mother's womb, and who could still find mirth in inexplicable foolishness—but laughter bubbled up from her nonetheless. It wasn't the raucous laughter of a child. She was still Aria T'Loak. She had an image to maintain, and her laughter always had an air of sensuality about it.

"You're funny, for a human."

There was no sensuality in her comment, though. Sarcasm dripped from her lips as heavily as saliva dripped from the mouth of an adjutant. When he returned her smile (and in the red lighting, his smile was a bit garish), she knew he no more believed his line of bullshit than she did. No way did he believe she could ever really be "crazy" for him, of all people left in the galaxy. It was her reaction he was pulling for, though, and Aria made sure she played it well as she walked away from him and toward the keeper. Even in her battered condition, she could affect a hip-swaying walk that would turn most human males to mush and send them away jabbering.

Bailey not so much. He played along. "That's a fancy way of saying I don't have a snowball's chance in hell."

"Oh, I don't know," Aria said, turning to face him. "Maybe, when this is all over, if we live through it, I'll find an inventive way to thank you for saving my life."

Bailey betrayed himself only for a second. Make that a microsecond. His jaw came unhinged. Even in the dim lighting, Aria saw it, but he rectified it quickly and cleared his throat. "Yeah right. I believe that like I believe we have a chance in hell of stopping Tim."

"Oh, I think our chances are pretty good," she said, with a light laugh that was as close to a giggle as someone like Aria would ever get. She watched the curiosity on Bailey's face, could almost hear him wondering in which direction her comment leaned. A sick pleasure worked its way through her. He'd been too confident and full of himself for most of their journey. She enjoyed watching him squirm now, but her joy was short-lived.

She and Bailey heard it at the same time. Playtime was over. Aria brought an arm like a stop sign across Bailey's chest to halt his forward movement.

"What the hell was that?"

"It sounded like a voice."

" _Quiet."_

She realized her own redundancy—to ask a question and then shush the answer—too late to take it back. The sound repeated just as he spoke.

"… _underestimated you, shhhhh…."_

The voice was garbled and interrupted as if it were floating on air, but there was no doubting who it was. The Illusive Man.

" _I warned you. Control is the…."_

Bailey pointed over her head and whispered. "I think it's coming from that vent."

Aria followed the sound. Another voice caught a puff of air to float toward their ears.

"… _controlling you!"_

Aria and Bailey shared an unspoken glance that asked the same question. Who is that? This voice, deeper, angrier, was not one they recognized, but the one that followed came through loud and clear. Neither one of them had to ask the question. She could have been standing right in the same room.

" _Controlling me is a lot different than controlling a Reaper."_

Shepard!

One would never have told the other, not then and never in the years to come, how it felt to hear the voice of Commander Shepard. The second her voice clicked with recognition, they were both filled with a hope they had not known since the start of the hell that had overtaken the Citadel. Even confronted with The Illusive Man, who likely had Shepard immobilized as he once had them, they knew this would soon all be over. Shepard never did anything by accident. The key to ending this war must lay with the Citadel, and Shepard.

The door opened, and both of them jumped, the words of The Illusive Man clinging to the air, " _Have a little faith."_ Their faith was stronger than it had ever been before.

Ahead of them was another dark corridor, but beyond were other faint sounds. The clang of machinery. The buzz of electricity. Where the hell where they? Aria grabbed Bailey by the arm and followed the keeper. Above the distant sounds and their own footsteps, the vents echoed staccato pieces of conversation down to them.

"… _when we learned there was more to the galaxy…the relays should be destroyed…they were scared of what we'd find…terrified…look at what humanity has achieved…the Reapers will do the same for us again…only if we can harness their ability to control…"_

Little Fucker wasn't moving nearly fast enough to suit Aria, nor was she liking the track of The Illusive Man's argument. If he could do what he claimed, if he could control the Reapers, then everything she'd fought to achieve in her lifetime would have been for nothing. The aspirations of every single lifeform now, and those that might come to be in the future would have no meaning under _his_ control. The Illusive Man cared for nothing but humanity. His own he would raise up like kings. Other races he would subjugate, and those of his own that defied him, people like Shepard, people like Bailey, would suffer cruelly under his hand. The very thought chilled her blood, stopped its flow cold in her body. She could not let him win.

Nor would Shepard. " _…you're playing with things you don't understand…with power you shouldn't be able to use…"_

They ran onward. Another doorway lay ahead. As the sounds of heavy machinery drew closer, the voices coming from the vents were drowning out.

"… _why shouldn't it be ours?"_

"… _we're not ready…"_

" _No, this is…humanity must evolve…"_

Another voice. Garbled. Low. Hard to hear.

The keeper made for the final one of its stations. Its tiny hands began working the console, playing over holographic interfaces neither one of them could make heads or tails of. But Aria was beginning to wonder. The door wasn't opening as fast it would have on any other area of the Citadel were the keeper operating it. This was just like the first time she tried to connect with the little guy. Something had attempted to block her. Her first thought had been the Illusive Man. If he could control their physical bodies, and control the Reapers' constructs, couldn't he just as easily attempt control over the Citadel and its keepers. The Citadel was a Reaper construct after all. Was he blocking their attempts to get at him? Or was it the Citadel itself?

"… _dedicated my life to understanding the Reapers…certainty the Crucible will allow me to control them."_

"The crucible?" Bailey said. "What's the crucible?"

Aria didn't know. There were a lot of things Shepard hadn't told her. Alliance Military security and all that. Right now, she didn't care. She only wanted to get this door open.

" _And then what?"_ Shepard asked the Illusive Man across an expanse of time and space unknown to Aria and Bailey.

Aria couldn't help but smile as her fingertips searched out the seam between the two doors, seeing if touch would discover their pliability. Shepard was a lot of things: Alliance military commander, fighter, weapons specialist, counselor, terrible dancer (Aria saw proof while biding her time in Purgatory), even human resources manager. She was terribly good at developing "employees" into becoming valuable members of her "organization." A talent Aria acknowledged she lacked, to her chagrin. But there was one side of Shepard most people didn't know about, and if they did, they surely wouldn't categorize it as Aria would—master manipulator.

What else would account for Aria not clenching her grip around Petrovsky's throat? She could have thrown a bit a biotic punch into her strangulation of him, and not only crushed his windpipe but severed his head from his body. She could have. She had wanted Petrovsky dead almost as much as she wanted the Illusive Man dead, but at the time, his face was all she had to pit her hatred against, and his throat was as close as she was going to get to _him._

In the end, she didn't claim her vengeance against either of them. It was Shepard. As much as Aria admired and respected the warrior for putting her life on the line to help restore Omega to its former glory, she hated the manipulator. Shepard's every word had been like a worm of morality boring into her brain. She'd said it right when she told Shepard she was "like a disease." A disease of ethics, principles and decency, a master manipulator like none other. Even the Illusive Man didn't stand a chance against her. Shepard had begun to do exactly what Aria had intended to (what she had done to Aria herself on Omega)—turn the Illusive Man's own erring beliefs against him.

The pity was, if they didn't find a way out of here, they wouldn't make it in time to lend a helping hand. Aria didn't have the physical strength to work against the servomotors that held the doors shut, but she might have the biotic strength.

"Owen, help me."

Bailey dug in his fingers, and Aria, her biotics, while the keeper plodded along on its console. As she had with everything else, Aria poured her all into the effort. More than Bailey. More than the keeper was even capable of. The door opened a crack. An amber light spilled from it, piercing one eye, temporarily blinding her. But Aria could still hear.

The Illusive Man's voice, high on whatever power he felt he had, and yet angered that he hadn't gotten through to the brick wall of integrity that was Commander Shepard, overwhelmed Aria's hearing and filled her with dread.

" _Look at the power they wield! Look at what they can do!"_

A shot rang out, pealing like a crack of lightning from its location, throughout the air vents and into the dark corridor they occupied as tangibly as if the bullet had been shot at them.

" _NO!"_

Aria didn't readily recognize the voice as her own. She knew only the echoing sound of a gunshot, the slow opening of the door, and a dread that something terrible had just happened. Before she had time to process exactly what the fear of Shepard's death meant to her, the door was flying open, she and Bailey were teetering forward, falling over. The only thing that kept them from falling into nothingness was a pile of bodies just as thick as the ones they'd encountered within the dark corridor. The voices were gone.

Bailey pulled Aria off the bodies and to her feet. The look on his face was one of horrified wonder. "Holy God."

What Aria saw left her just as dumbfounded. A chasm, as wide as it was deep, disappeared from either side of their view in a semi-circle. The droning machinery they had heard from the other side of the door were moving struts. They resembled, and even moved similarly to the felt hammers inside a piano. But these weren't striking any musical chords. Deep they delved into the chasm, as far as Aria's eyes could see on either side, moving up or down at intervals for no apparent reason. Flickers of white lightning leapt from wall to wall in a never ending succession. Nothing as intricate in design had Aria seen anywhere else on the Citadel. Whatever this area was, it hadn't been created by asari hands.

She and Bailey had not the luxury to ponder its existence, either.

Aria stepped over the bodies. They were everywhere, littered like garbage all along the platforms that led left or right to similar doorways. She was sure the only thing they would find inside them were more bodies.

"Hurry," she said, urging Bailey forward. "We have to find Shepard."

"Where? She could be anywhere. In case you haven't noticed, Aria, I'm as lost as you are."

"We go the only way we can." Ahead, what looked like a ramp extended before them. Shaped like a U, it went downward, flattened out and then climbed back up toward an opening filled with an amber light. Aria pointed. "We go there."

* * *

 **The final part of _All For One_ is up next.**


	24. All For ONE, Part VIII

_**MASS EFFECT: ONE**_

* * *

 _"Amonkira, Lord of Hunters,_

 _grant that my hands be steady,_

 _my aim true,_

 _and my feet swift._

 _And should the worst come to pass..."_

 _~Thane Krios~_

* * *

 **All For ONE**

 _ **Part VIII**_

 **Before Endgame**

 _ **T**_ he ramp went down at a thirty-degree angle. Bailey followed after Aria's determined stride, stepping over bodies as if they were no more than obstacles on the ground. Not very long before, she had been slowly weakening, close to giving up. The only thing that kept her going was knowing they were closing the distance between themselves and TIM. Now that they were close enough to hear his voice in the air, a second wind had energized her. Pumped full with the fuel of vengeance, Bailey could do nothing to stop her.

In the hours since the Reaper attack of the Citadel began, Bailey had learned much about Aria, but her thirst for vengeance out-weighed every other motivation. It was her most fatal flaw. It would get them both killed if he let it, and Bailey wasn't much on dying, especially for such an archaic notion as revenge. He had no control over Aria, but over himself, he held complete control.

While Aria continued on, making it as far as the level portion of the ramp, Bailey stopped. He stood on the downgrade as Aria was about to ascend on the incline.

"Aria."

She ignored him. A streak of lightning blocked her forward momentum for a millisecond, giving Bailey one more chance.

"Aria!"

She stopped, turned around, and gave him the classic Aria-glare he'd seen on more than one occasion since this hell began.

" _What?"_

"I'm done."

"Excuse me."

"I can't do this anymore. _I'm done_ walking over bodies. _I'm done_ forgetting about the people who need my help while we go in search of your retribution."

"Have you lost your mind?"

"No, I'm just tired."

"As am I, but we cannot give up now. We're too close. I can almost smell him!"

Bailey watched Aria's innate need ignite in her eyes like an ice-cold flame. "People are dying, Aria."

"And people will continue to die unless we stop him."

"Unless I help you get your revenge, you mean."

Aria took several steps across the level platform, but she did not ascend toward him. "Don't be pigheaded, Owen. If we stop _him_ , that gives Shepard one more chance to stop the Reapers. My vengeance is secondary."

"I find that hard believe."

"Then, believe in a future in which the Illusive Man controls the Reapers, because that's exactly what will happen if we give up. Sometimes you have to sacrifice lives to save lives. If we don't, Owen, the galaxy will be at _his_ mercy."

Bailey sighed. He didn't know how much more of this he could take. He knew he should be out there, directing his men, getting people to safety and trying to route the Reaper threat from the station. But he also knew Aria was right. If he had enough hair, he would have pulled it out by the root. Instead, he settled for raking his fingers through it.

In it, he let Aria see defeat. He was giving in to her demands as he'd done since the start, even before the Reapers attacked.

" _NO!"_ a booming voice echoed across the chasm, almost mirroring Bailey's own inner fight. But it wasn't his voice. This was the voice he'd heard pumped through the ventilation system, the voice Aria identified as the Illusive Man.

" _I'm in control! No one is telling me what to do!"_

The voice drew their eyes across the expanse of thrumming piano-like hammers. Theirs wasn't the only ramp that led toward an opening lit with an amber light. Bailey had seen them before, along with other doorways to corridors just like the one they had exited. He just hadn't made the mental connection. But only one of those amber lights flitted with moving shadows. Aria saw it, too.

She ascended the ramp toward him. Bailey saw not vengeance in her twisted expression. What he saw was an angry determination mixed with a healthy dose of something Bailey never expected to see on Aria's face—fear.

She ran by him, grabbing his arm, pulling him back up the ramp. "This way! Hurry!"

Back over the pile of corpses they vaulted, and back toward the doorway, but they did not go in. On the platform to their left was the keeper they had forgotten all about. It steadily made its way across the narrow ledge, planting its small feet between gaps that the bodies strewn across it left. Had they been paying attention to what led them thus far, they might have made it halfway to their destination. Instead, they were behind, running to beat an outcome that Aria seemed to fear. If he hadn't known the whole story of how Shepard had helped Aria take back Omega, he might have wondered what or who registered as an expression of fear, but Bailey was no hack and he wasn't stupid. He knew because he was feeling the same thing.

If Shepard died, there was no hope for any of them.

Picking their way through the bodies on the platform (for slow and careful was the only way to move lest one be pitched into the moving hammers), Aria met up with and soon eclipsed the keeper. It scrunched against the wall like a spider, not wanting to be touched but knowing it had to complete its commission. They no longer needed its help, though. They were close. If it weren't for the bodies, it would only take a matter of minutes to get to where the shadows moved, but like this…

Another shot rang out, freezing them in place. Ahead, a shadow moved and keeled over. The gathering shadows swallowed it. Bailey didn't know what it meant, but he knew what Aria thought it meant.

"Shit!" Aria cried. "Hurry, Owen!" Aria's foot slipped and she managed to right herself before she plummeted.

Bailey tried to grab her, slow her down, but she pulled out of his grasp. "Slow down, Aria, or you're gonna kill yourself!"

Bailey couldn't see Aria gritting her teeth, or the hatred coloring her face, but he could hear it in her voice. "If he killed her…if she's dead, I am going to make him regret he was ever born."

She continued forward relentlessly, stepping over bodies, stepping _on_ bodies. The place where the shadows moved wasn't getting any closer, no matter how they hurried. Bailey looked behind him to see how far they'd come, and was struck by another sight. The keeper that had led them thus far had stopped its forward momentum. It looked lost, confused, as though wondering, _What am I doing here?_ Then it turned around and went back the way it came. He thought of what Aria said: _the Illusive Man was its master._

"Aria."

Again, she ignored him.

"Aria, wait."

"No!"

"I think—"

Like the sun splitting the horizon, a bright white light arced through the opening and into interior of the chasm. Both of them froze and shielded their eyes.

"What the hell—?"

Through one of the openings, Bailey saw the last thing he ever expected to see again—Earth.

 **EEE**

 _ **K**_ olyat was beginning to wonder if the safe room was safe at all. Getting to it had been hell enough. They'd had to fight through a small horde of husks just to get inside and nearly lost Jahleed in the process. (Were it not for his pressure suit, he might not have survived the pack of mindless monsters that had attacked him. His air regulator had been punctured and he would have surely suffocated if not for Chorban's quick patchwork.) Kolyat himself was nursing another scratch wound in his arm from the final fight. A piece of Tevos's skirt worked as a makeshift bandage while they listened to the onslaught taking place outside the safe room.

"This is exactly what happened in the escape pod," Sparatus said. "They scratched and tore at the walls until they got in. They never gave up."

Conrad sat with his face buried in his hands. "Oh man, I hope these walls are thicker than an escape pod."

Tevos's biotics had been the saving force behind their entrance into the safe room, but Conrad had gotten in several good killing shots himself. Even Chorban had taken aim and laid waste to several husks.

Despite his fears, Kolyat made himself believe the walls would hold. _Positivity can see you through even the most dire of circumstances,_ he heard his father tell him from across the sea. The walls would hold until help came. Kolyat wouldn't allow himself to use the word "if." Help would come. The problem wasn't in rescue, but how long the six of them (seven, if one counted Keepie) would hold up without food or water. There was a miniscule amount inside the safe room, but only enough to secure the lives of three council members, not six refugees. They'd taken as much liquid sustenance as they could afford to portion out.

The biggest worry now was the screech of husks outside, and the wheezing intake of air from Jahleed. Volus breathed and derived sustenance much differently than the rest of them. How they did it was unknown to Kolyat. Maybe through the ports on the front of their suits, but whatever their means, there was no such apparatus here for his kind. Jahleed could starve or suffocate before then. All of them knew it. None of them spoke it. Not even Jahleed.

"Chorban," Kolyat said, still breathing heavy from their last encounter. "Does the keeper still have access to the Citadel from here?"

"I cannot imagine why he wouldn't."

Whether Chorban was personalizing the keeper for Jahleed's sake, or because he had grown accustomed to its presence as had every one of them, Kolyat didn't know, nor was there time to analyze it. "See if he can find out what's happening out there?" he asked the salarian.

"Of course." Chorban began fumbling with his omni-tool. There was no mistaking the tremble in his long fingers.

"Can it send out a signal?" Tevos asked.

"Yes," said her turian counterpart. "Call for aid."

"I will try."

Command sent, Keepie quickly found its bearings and went in search of the safe room's only console. For a time, all they heard beside the scratch and moan of husks, were the quiet tinkerings of both the salarian and the keeper. One commanded, while the other obeyed. Messages sent. Messages received.

The waiting became too much for Sparatus. "Well? Speak, salarian, speak."

Chorban shook his head. "I—what I'm seeing is confusing."

"What does he report?" Kolyat asked.

He shrugged and looked at them, baffled. "It just keeps saying over and over, _I tried, Shepard._ "

"Shepard?" Conrad looked up from his hiding place behind his hands. "What about Shepard?"

Kolyat was about to ask a similar question—"Could Shepard be on the Citadel?"—when, one by one, the scratching and moaning of husks went silent. They hadn't disappeared, nor were they waiting quietly to see if one of them might poke their head out of doors to see if all was safe. No, the sound was replaced by another—the clack of sharp nails and the patter of shoeless feet moving away. They were leaving as though called to some greater cause. The seven of them could only imagine what.

 **EEE**

 _ **"Y**_ ou're a special child, Luciana," she had said. "Don't be afraid. One day, you'll do great things."

Luciana couldn't remember the woman's name, or whether she had responded to her or not. It was too long ago, and at that moment in time, she had been too afraid to allow anything other than terror of her surroundings to imprint her consciousness.

She'd been laying upon a surgeon's table in a white room, surrounded by white lights and people in white gowns with caps covering their heads. Only their faces were visible. They had stared down at her in a variety of skin colors. Taken out of context, even Luciana could have imagined the scenario as coming from a horrible fragment of a tortured child's life where curious people wanted to experiment upon a "special child." But that wasn't the case.

She had been twelve years old, and only a couple of years inside Grissom Academy. This was the memory of her L3 implantation surgery. Luciana had reached the decision herself to be implanted. She hadn't been coerced in anyway, but the experience itself had been nonetheless terrifying. Shaved cue-bald and led by a team of surgeons into a sterile room where a series of blades and electrical devices were laid out for later use inside her brain once she'd succumbed to the anesthesia—who wouldn't have been terrified, at any age?

Her only source of strength had been memories of the only home she knew—Mateo and Abuelita. Grissom Academy hadn't quite become her home yet. She hadn't met Jason Prangley, and her first introduction to Jack was many years away. What she heard as she lay on the operating table, as the anesthesiologist began to administer the drug that would put her to sleep, was Abuelita's voice. She spoke from a faraway place, her voice carried along by something extragalactic.

" _No hay nada que no puedas hacer. Levántate por encima del miedo, hija mía. No dejes que te conquiste. El tiempo vendrá, Luciana, cuando algo más grande que el miedo llegue a ti." (_ "There is nothing you cannot do. Rise above the fear, my daughter. Do not let it conquer you. The time will come, Luciana, when that which is greater than fear will come to you.")

Those words came back to Luciana now over the expanse of time like a whisper in the ear. But Abuelita was long gone. Her bones rested beneath Mateo's earth. If she existed, it was in another form, on another ethereal plane of existence Luciana knew nothing of. She would take her words now. She would let them flow through her biotics and fill her mind, blocking out her fear and her pain. She must, or their final stand would be for nothing.

Luciana had no idea from where the strength came, certainly not from her failing body, but she had lifted Jasper from the floor of the baptistry. He was hurting, but that couldn't be helped. It was better to feel pain while fighting for your life than to feel pain while dying. That's what Jasper told her. Luciana wouldn't know. Right now, she felt nothing. Her mind was clear.

She had carried him as far as the high alter when the audible hum of the mass effect field softly faded away as one might dim a light. Glass from every window (and Westminster Cathedral had plenty of them) shattered from all sides. Out the corners of her eyes, Luciana caught a glimpse of the swarm. Candle light glimmered off husk bodies and off shards of glass falling to the marble floor like heavy rain. The pop of pistol fire. Salarians crying in fear. But Luciana kept moving. Over the high alter and toward the gate Rentola held open. She pushed Jasper through first, then herself, barely hearing as Rentola commanded his soldiers through last, the clang of the gates, the sizzle of an omni-tool welder.

Four gates led to the crypt below. There had been precious little time in the minutes before for Rentola and his men to prepare their descent. While Luciana levitated Jasper under the most stringent of protests, the salarians had made quick work of welding and blocking the other three gates behind the high alter.

It wouldn't hold, not under the swell of Reaper forces. She knew this as well as Rentola did. There was only one option. Deep within the crypt, past white brick and mortar walls, were the tombs of cardinals, some of them hundreds of years old. Rentola's quick assessment of the location had given Luciana the only idea that might work to save their lives, but it wasn't one she had discussed with any of them.

The salarian soldiers ran ahead of Luciana and her human cargo through a cramped passageway that was older than all of them. "This way! Hurry!" Rentola cried.

Behind her, what sounded like thousands of raspy screams threatened Luciana's calm. Fear trembled at the corner of her mind. If she let it in, the pain would come also. For now, the welding held, but for how long? The iron gates creaked and groaned, and mortar crumbled under the weight of God knew how many husks. Their thirst for blood knew no pain.

A bend in the old passageway led to a final descent of stone steps. Beyond it, another smaller iron gate where the first of a number of tombs waited. Luciana hardly saw anything but Jasper's excruciating pain. Her biotics couldn't hold him completely still. Bones that weren't completely healed grinded against bone. A pink color stained his teeth. He was bleeding.

Luciana took one careful step at a time, ignoring the threat behind her, apologizing to Jasper the only way she could—with her eyes. She could not speak. To speak was to acknowledge her own pain, and she would not do that. It reflected itself well enough in the paleness of her face and the sweat on her brow.

Decent complete, the two salarian soldiers marched passed her to seal the final gate. "There's no point," Rentola called. "It doesn't reach the ceiling."

Carefully, she laid Jasper onto the floor near a tomb encased in an amber-colored marble, and released him. He gasped as though she had encased him without air, but Jasper wasn't gasping for breath. His was a cry of pain masked only by Luciana's own cry. A searing one, followed by an uncomfortable warmth, washed over her abdomen. Something hot and sticky began a slow cascade down the front of her legs. Her wound had reopened. Luciana held onto the tomb for support, but her body was giving out on her. Black spots were beginning to form in her vision. The room was spinning.

"No," she pleaded aloud.

"They'll be through any moment, men," Rentola said from somewhere outside of her vision. "Ready your weapons. Let's make what damage we can."

A hand on her ankle. Luciana looked down, her sight eaten up by black spots. She saw the armor of an N7 Paladin, but the face poking from the top of it was not Jasper's. Shaking her head, fiercely blinking the spots away, Luciana focused her vision and saw Abuelita.

" _No tengas miedo, hija mía. La muerte no es el fin. Es otro principio. Morir por otro es vivir." (_ "Do not be afraid, my daughter. Death is not the end. It is another beginning. To die for another is to live.")

Abuelita looked to her left, and then her right, showing Luciana what she already knew. There were only four tombs.

"Commander," she called over the grind of bending iron that tunneled toward them through the catacombs. Rentola acknowledged her with a glance. She swallowed, made herself breathe. "I…have an…idea."

"We've no time, Ensign!"

She reached one arm to him. _"Help me."_

With a growl of frustration, Rentola came to her side and steadied her. "What idea could you possibly have that will do anything for us now?"

The grip on her ankle tightened, but it was not Abuelita staring up at her this time. On the floor at her feet, Jasper was pleading with her, shaking his head. He knew what was at stake and he was begging her to make the right choice.

Luciana did not answer either of them. Ignoring propriety, and the rending pain in her gut, Luciana straightened herself with Rentola's help and stretched her arms out to either side. She put aside what this world considered blasphemous. All that was once holy had been violated, the cathedral's divine glory gone along with its past and its views of right and wrong. That which was profane now stained its former magnificence with a mutation of life.

Survival was all that mattered.

Luciana pushed with her biotics. One by one, tombs that were sealed shut now opened. Bodies once considered godlike, her power desecrated. The screech of the profane nullified their importance. These men were long dead. Let them perform one last act of mercy and extend life to those who still had it.

Luciana turned one final look to Rentola and said, "Get in."

Confused, neither salarian readily moved.

" _Now!"_

The crack of mortar echoed down the long and cavernous space, forcing two of the salarian soldiers into action. Long dead bodies or not, the salarians crawled into the tight space of the tomb, and Luciana sealed them inside.

Rentola, however, didn't budge. "Ensign, there's no time to argue. Let me be the one—"

Luciana never let him finish. "No. I'm the _only_ one." She pushed with her biotics, lifting Rentola from the ground. There was no time for kindness. Rentola went roughly inside the tomb and she sealed it amid his protests.

"Luciana."

The gentle voice she grown so accustomed to could hardly be heard over the rush of husks. They were coming, but in the dwindling amount of time she had, she looked down on him with a smile of tears.

"Please," he rasped. He couldn't say more. Pain had gripped him in its crushing hand, but she knew what he wanted to say. He was begging her to save herself, to leave him where he was, to let him be the distraction. She watched his lips move, watched them say again without the use of speech, _Please, Luciana._

Tearing herself away from his pleading eyes, Luciana forced everything she had left into her biotics. The rhythmic tap-tap of Abuelita's cane spurred her, bringing to mind the memory of the cogwheel and the wind and the desert and the hard-packed ground. She was no longer inside a crypt inside a cathedral. There was no danger. She was back on Mateo, training with Abuelita, honing her burgeoning skills as a biotic. She did not see how bright she glowed, throwing the dark room into an ethereal light, or the awe she struck in Jasper. She simply lifted, first the heavy lid, embellished with the stone-carved body of a dead man, and then Jasper. Even lost in the past, she knew there was no time to do them separately. She lifted them together. The force was as much physical as it was biotic, and Luciana felt something give way inside. She stumbled, nearly dropping him, and cried out.

The fantasy faded. Reality invaded.

As gently as her failing body could, Luciana laid Jasper over the uneven bones of a dead man. She could not give him a pain-free landing and as her final seconds wound down, she hated herself for it.

Funny, that right at the end of things, she would find what she wanted most in the world. It wasn't her biotics, or the need to be powerful, or to do great things with her life. Sure, that was all well and good, something to push for in life, but it wasn't what she wanted. Not really. It was even funnier that she would find it in the middle of a war, when life was at its bleakest. Life within Grissom Academy had given her strength and friendship and the chance to know what it meant to give up everything you have for another, for a greater cause, but had never given her that which she'd sought since the death of Abuelita.

Love.

Here was someone who could give her what Abuelita had all those years ago on Mateo, and in a few seconds Luciana would never see him again. She wanted those few seconds to say goodbye, to say that she was glad to have known him in their short time together, but the screeching of husks behind her said she no longer had time, and by the horror in Jasper's eyes, they were close. The clack of hundreds of nails grated across stone.

" _Morir por otro es vivir,_ " Luciana said to Jasper and sealed the lid.

She did not wonder how long it would be before anyone could come to their rescue. Luciana turned and faced the oncoming wave. The last thing she saw before she shut her eyes was the leering, gaping maw of a husk, bright eyes and grey teeth leaning in for the kill.

 **EEE**

 _ **C**_ haos.

Trumpet blast. Screams of the undead. The echo of bullets.

No cover. No protection. Only one barrier, held in place by two unlikely souls—one hardly old enough to be on a battlefield, and the other, too much power in too small a tattooed package to be doing so small a job.

Beside them, a ragtag group stood against an unending horde. Three hundred Spartans against thousands of Persian troops, and their stand would soon find its place alongside such history. They fought without the use of swords, and a barrier was their only shield. Biotics tossed husks without number, and bullets blasted the brains of cannibals and marauders alike.

Overhead, a jet screeched across the sky and a red beam of light followed it. The jet swooped, dived, rolled, narrowly avoiding the death beam, and moved in for another go 'round. A gnat buzzing a rhinoceros.

On the ground, two orbs gave off an iridescent glow. Leviathan artifacts. They lit the grounds around Big Ben and its last defenders like a glittering dance floor. But no slow love song played in the background. Only the beat of a Reaper footfall, the rhythmic pop-pop of gunfire, the screech of a banshee, and the cry of a harvester. The orbs, designed to enthrall Reapers and their kind, were not doing their job and there was a reason for that. These two were meant only as a lure. The other three had already been unshielded and what effect these may have had on Reaper constructs in its vicinity were unknown.

There was only one plan. Fight until there was nothing left. Fight until Commander Shepard accomplished what she set out to accomplish right from the very beginning—to destroy the Reapers before they destroy us. And so they fought, despite the barrage, for the sake of that one, their universal commander, knowing their barrier and their lives would not hold out for long.

Brutes had begun to demolish Big Ben's iron gates. Topping it like the breaking waves on a seashore were innumerable husks. Marauders shot their rifles from a distance, whittling away on the barrier. There were no more air strikes to defend them. Two harvesters had locked their sights onto the jet in mid-air as is its pilot fought to defend herself and take down a Reaper all on her own.

This had become a true suicide mission unlike any they had ever fought, and like any good suicide mission, each member of the team assigned to it would fall one by one.

It started with the pilot. Wing nicked by the shot from a harvester, the jet began to spin out of control. Streaking across the sky, it trailed a black cloud of smoke, but it was far from finished. This wasn't just any pilot. Bred for agility from birth, this pilot knew how to right her ship. She was going down, but she wasn't going to go down without taking some of them with her. Turning its fire upon one of its attackers, the pilot nose-dived on a harvester, bringing it down with her to the ground. Harvester and jet careened into the path of oncoming brutes. A conflagration of fire and heat, mechanical and biomechanical body parts, and then BOOM!

One set of eyes witnessed this from afar. It was the only moment she felt like giving up on it all. From the moment she met her, she'd never like her, called her all sorts of undesirable names, but she knew her strengths, knew of her resiliency and determination in the face of insurmountable odds, and respected like hell her stand against the Illusive Man. A knot like a malignant tumor twisted in her gut. It wasn't fear. It was rage. This was the end and there was nothing she could do about it.

The Reaper turned its attention upon the group huddled in the shadow of a monster clock. The final harvester turned their way and obliterated the barrier, and almost obliterated them with one shot. The barrier makers were thrown back by the impact, tossed into the tree hedge, torn and scraped by branches. A krogan, screaming obscenities, ran headlong toward a brute. A scarred mercenary took one last gulp from his flask and popped the simple brains of cannibals even as bullets pierced his shields. Salarians had opened fire, making their explosive scorpion shots count with the most brutish of enemies and those without shields. Pops of explosions tossed body parts in the air and ripped husks apart like tissue paper. Human and asari biotics ripped creatures from the ground and sent them flying all directions. Warp, throw, pull, shockwave. All were deployed, but none of it really mattered in the end. Freedom from annihilation always came at a cost.

The wave over took them, and then it all began to happen at once.

A harvester cannon barreled through the STG unit sent to protect the Leviathan Enthrallment Team. Many were obliterated in an orange ball of fire, but some were thrown as far the base of the clock tower, among them a long-standing major who held the line for as long as he could.

A krogan vanished amongst a throng of the enemy. Even above the hell of war, one could hear his battle cry.

A bullet pierced the shoulder of the youngest biotic. He went down with a yelp and it was the last anyone saw of him.

A dark-skinned human, wearing no more armor than his female biotic counterpart, had blasted one band of husks when another overtook him. If he cried out at all, it wasn't heard.

The shields of a feared and respected mercenary finally took one too many hits. His beloved "Jessie" was all that was left to defend him, and he put her to good use, blasting the enemy with point-blank precision before a shot took him down and the enemy overwhelmed him.

An asari came face to face with one of her own kind. No longer beautiful, but twisted and beastly, it caught her by the throat and lifted her toward its hideous maw. The asari's serenity melted into abject fear. Not for her own death. She would have given it one hundred times over if it meant sparing another of her kind this misery.

And Jack witnessed all of it. Through her eyes, these moments passed by at a slow crawl, like still frames in a kinetic image. She was the last one on the stage of battle, and for her final act, as the curtain came down, and the stage lights pinpointed her in her one red beam, Jack raised two middle-finger salutes to the Reaper bearing down on her. Bullets were nicking her shields, but she still managed to scream…

" _ **FUCK YOU!"**_

Jack's last image was a bizarrely flummoxed Reaper before its red light penetrated her soul.

 **EEE**

 _ **I**_ t felt like defeat. Even as she moved relentlessly toward a truth she was terrified to witness, forgetting Bailey's existence somewhere behind her, it felt like running away. Aria knew, for she had felt it before, and its taste was bitter.

Once, when she was young enough to still have a mother in her life, a plate of food had been set before that she had initially refused to eat. Some krogan delicacy that resembled nothing more than a mass of uncooked, quivering flesh. Mother, with a skin tone that was more violet than Aria's own deep purple, had been a hard woman. She didn't tolerate much—backtalk, disobedience—but refuse to eat a meal she'd worked hard to prepare, and one could expect one's day would not turn out well. She'd gone the entire night and all of the next day sitting at the table, plate of food before her. Mother had denied her any other necessity. Nothing to drink. No trips to the bathroom. Nothing, until she ate her dinner, and by then, it had begun to sour.

It took a lot to break Aria, even then. But she had been only a child, her biotics not yet realized let alone honed. Determination, and a burgeoning iron will, had been all that kept her going. Eventually however, desperation, hunger…and Mother won out. It was the worst thing she had ever eaten, then and since, but ate it she had. Every bite, down to the last scrap of bone.

Not an hour later, she vomited it all back out in hot, wretched chunks.

Back then, she had seen the whole ordeal as defeat, but over the years, Aria began to change her view. She no longer saw it as an ordeal, but a lesson. One she would deploy on many occasions. Sometimes you have swallow pride and eat shit to move on.

Applying that council to her current situation, Aria kept moving. The taste of defeat was as bitter as the spoiled krogan delicacy she'd been forced to eat as a child, but she would not allow it to best her. They still had a mission to complete, and if Shepard was dead, and the Illusive Man alive, her situation hadn't changed. The Illusive Man still had to be stopped or she would die trying.

Despite a litter of human corpses in her way, Aria kept putting one foot in front the other, just as she had put one bite in her mouth at a time, chewed and swallowed. So what if the arms had opened? So what if there was more than the sight of Earth awaiting them outside? Out there a battle waged. In her peripheral vision, Aria glimpsed turian frigates, Alliance warships, even her own men, Blue Suns, Eclipse and Blood Pack fighter jets. So what if the Reapers were tearing them to pieces? Aria had lost everything she'd ever fought for her—her dignity chief among them. Still, she chewed and swallowed. She kept moving toward the inevitable end.

 **EEE**

 _ **B**_ ailey kept up with Aria as best he could. There was no stopping her now, and at this point, he didn't care. All he could see was a sight so devastating it actually pained him. His chest was tightening. His eyes watering.

Earth looked like a fireball. Nothing about it resembled the blue world he once called home. Even on the daylight side, where blue water should have shown through like a glimmering marble, there was only dark clouds and streaks of lightning in the upper atmosphere.

No more heartening was the sight of battle. Every intelligent species in the galaxy fought an untold number of Reaper warships, and they were losing. Lost ships had become nothing more than debris to float in orbit. He wondered how many frozen bodies floated along with them.

What could he do, but suffer in silence and follow Aria? There was nothing else but what they closed in on. A place where shadows no longer moved, where voices no longer spoke, and where now only an inauspicious future awaited.

Bailey kept following.

The last leg of their journey came and neither spoke to the other. They didn't take a moment to look at each other or gauge each other's own fears. They just plodded onward, down the ramp and across until they reached the ascent, each step more leaden than the last.

The ascent was the worst, like turning the final pages of a book where you can't possibly imagine the ending. It could go either way. Good or bad. Either the good guys win or the victory goes to the bad guys.

Bailey and Aria topped the ramp.

Of all the things Bailey could have seen, the sight of two lone bodies, in comparison to all he had already experienced, was mundane in the extreme. It was Aria's reaction that shocked him.

"No, _no,_ _ **no!**_ _"_ she screamed, marching toward the closest body with each explosive word.

The face was one Bailey barely recognized, but still eaten up with biomechanical scars as it had been when viewed through a vid screen. On the docks that had been; the last time Bailey saw Bray alive. The Illusive Man. This time, more than Reapers scars marred his face. The left side of his head was one massive wound. Projectiles of bone and brain matter littered the floor of this jutting extension into nothingness. Blood had pooled beneath him.

Aria's vengeance had already been secured by none other than the Illusive Man himself. But that wasn't good enough. Relentless momentum carried her forward to drive a kick into the dead man's torso. Blow after blow she delivered to a body that could no longer feel anything. Bailey heard the sickening crack of rib bones. The Illusive Man did nothing but jerk lifelessly.

"Son of a bitch! Coward!" Aria removed her pistol and shot him pointblank between the eyes. "You took everything from me! You don't get to take this!" She buried two more bullets into his heart.

"Enjoying yourself?" Bailey asked. He wasn't surprised to see her turn the pistol toward him. She wouldn't shoot, not this late in the game, but the look in her eyes scared him for a second. "Go ahead. Shoot. What's the point now?"

Bailey pointed out over the vastness of space and battle and the destruction of Earth, and Aria lowered her arm like the weapon in her hand weighed tons.

"Bray," was all she could think to say.

"I know."

Bailey wasn't a betting man, but he would have bet a million creds against ever seeing a glimmer of remorse of the face of the Pirate Queen. He would never have hedged any bets against ever seeing a tear, but he was even beginning to doubt those odds. Aria looked so utterly defeated.

He couldn't bear to watch her anymore, and turned away. On the other side of a raised platform, another body lay propped up against it. Bailey went to inspect. He didn't know the man, but he recognized the face.

"Admiral Anderson," he whispered. Blood stained the admiral's uniform. A single shot. The first one they heard? Bailey touched two fingers to the dark skin of the admiral's neck and felt nothing. "You did your duty, Admiral. God speed."

He looked up momentarily to see Aria crouched over the Illusive Man's body, but she wasn't looking at him. Her thoughts were elsewhere. He didn't think her capable of suicide, but then again, he didn't really know her as well as he sometimes thought he did. She always seemed to surprise him.

Bailey looked back at the Admiral, feeling a mixture of sadness and pride for the man, when his eyes caught something else. On the ground beside him was a small pool of blood. It sat away from Anderson's body, as though someone may have sat beside him for a time. Bailey stood, looked around. There was a noticeable indention in the floor before a raised console. He recognized the console as similar to one used in C-Sec to control the opening and closing of the arms. If the Illusive Man and Anderson were both dead, then who—?

"Aria."

No answer. Bailey turned. She was walking away, limping, holding herself together as if she thought she might fall apart.

"This isn't over, Aria. We haven't lost. Commander Shepard is still alive!"

When Aria turned, Bailey saw an asari nearly devoid of color. She had given up, was leaving to find some quiet place to die. But something inside her still lived. He felt it as surely as he felt his own heartbeat. He had to find a way to bring it out.

"It think she's—" Bailey looked at the indention in the floor and followed it to the only place it could have gone. Up. Below them was nothing, a drop of probably hundreds of meters, but above was a low ceiling. And above them, the missing puzzle piece. "She must be on the next level."

"How do we get up there?"

The light he saw had lit within her again, and it made Bailey smile. "I have no idea, but I guaran—"

He was going to say he could guarantee they would find a way. Whatever it took, they would find Commander Shepard. But he couldn't finish. A sound had reached his ears. It wasn't unusual or strange. It was eerily familiar, and amplified a hundred times by the chasm.

"Oh shit," Bailey said.

"Husks!"

He had no idea where they were coming from. Bailey only knew they needed to move. He raced to Aria's side, grabbed her arm and pulled her to follow him down the ramp. Only then did the danger become apparent. The walls were crawling with what seemed like every husk on the Citadel. They poured from every crevice, above and below. They topped the ramp behind them, descended the walls in front of them. The way out was sealed. Any thoughts of finding Shepard fled their minds. Aria and Bailey shot, dropping husks here and there. Her biotics tossed dozens of them from their path, but there was only one reality…

Their keeper was gone. They would never make it to the only exit with enough time to open it.

 **EEE**

 _ **L**_ ike anyone else in the galaxy, there were a lot of things Aria T'Loak regretted. Not being able to save her daughter, and not being a better mother while she still had the opportunity; murdering her own mother in her sleep; running like a coward away from Omega and leaving it in the hands of a truer coward, Petrovsky; not being able to bring Bray home to his family; but most of all, at the end of things, Aria regretted not having the chance to thank Shepard, and Owen, for the way they had impacted her life. If she had the chance, she probably still wouldn't say a damn thing. She had a reputation to maintain. She was a hardass, aloof, unreachable, her walls impenetrable. But as a million claws reached for her, as thousands of screeches vibrated in her ears, and a violent death loomed…when Owen took her hand and twined his fingers with hers, Aria did not regret holding on with all her might.

This was the end and she was okay with it. Her fight had not been for nothing.

* * *

 **As alwasy, would love to know what you think. Reviews are welcome. Thanks for reading.**

 **For anyone thinking this is the end of the story, it's not. It's just the end of this segment called _All For ONE._ There are two more chapters on the way. Keep your eyes on the FOREWORD page for updates on those chapters.**


	25. ONE For All

**Before you begin reading, go to Youtube and listen to the the "Never Ending Nightmare" video on YouTube (q4pqgBw_exw). It's almost ten minutes long, but even if you listen to only the first few minutes, you'll get the gist of what this chapter is all about—Shepard's reoccurring dream. The video is interesting in that these voices, based on the choices you made in all three games, are present in these dreams. You just don't hear them clearly. I thought it was interesting and moving to listen to, so I incorporated it into this chapter.**

* * *

 _ **MASS EFFECT: ONE**_

* * *

 **ONE For All**

 **The Normandy**

" _Y_ _ou've always made me proud, Liara."_

 _ **E**_ very child should hear such words from a parent, especially if the child was one who worked hard and struggled to make something of herself. Short-lived species like salarians or humans tend to work harder within their limited lifespan. They have more to prove in a shorter amount of time. Thus, they may hear these sentiments, or even give them as their life nears its end. Even then, the chance to hear or speak them may never come, stolen by the wind or selfish inner pride.

For species such as the asari or krogan, who have outlived all other intelligent species in the galaxy, one would think given the long lifespan that these sentiments might be heard more than once in a lifetime. For some, the opposite is true. The words never come at all. The effects of a society's culture, the many unfruitful experiences in a long life, could prove to be an impediment to a parent who loves their child but does not know how to show it.

Liara knew that first hand, but she would never be such a mother. Her child would hear it every day. Nothing would take it from her. Not heartache. Not isolation or even desolation. Her child would know the love of a mother that she had not.

One hand on her lower abdomen, and the other holding an item she thought never to possess, at least not for a long time to come, Liara stared upon a closed room she both needed and dreaded to step into—Shepard's cabin. It had been calling to her since they heard the news from the Admiral himself, since he had shut them down dead in the water, since Ashley had taken hope out of her hands.

There was still hope, still a chance they could pull off the impossible and reach someone who could help Shepard. Liara knew what she had to do, and if undermining the new command was what it required, then so be it. That first step was going to involve recruitment, starting with the star bad boy of the Normandy, and Liara was not thinking James Vega. Only a turian like Garrus Vakarian would have the balls to go against a direct order. She was going to need him to help convince the others. Tali and Javik would be easy to pull to her side. She already had Joker. It was the rest of the human Alliance crew she worried about.

Liara knew what she had to do, but Shepard's cabin kept calling. It was just as in the vision; the deafening call of a distant point of light, heard not with ears but felt with the soul, the body. It drew her away from a mission of mutiny, and toward a mission of the heart.

Liara stepped forward. The door slid open.

Shepard's cabin was the one place on the ship no one had ventured to since the race away from Earth, nor since the crash landing. No soft light lit the room anymore. With the planet's slowly dwindling sun, the skylight illuminated a room in shambles.

"By the goddess," Liara whispered and entered the room. The doors whooshed swiftly closed behind her.

Where once was order, there was chaos. Everything that once had its place was now on the floor: lamps, model ships, papers, picture frames, even a hamster's cage.

"Oh no." She looked behind her to make sure it hadn't attempted an escape. "Where are you, little rodent?"

She searched under the desk, in the bathroom, the shower, all while she righted fallen items. The models went back to their places, or at least where she thought they had gone. (The times she had spent in this room hadn't been spent in visual landscaping. The only landscape she had memorized in this room was the gently sloping hills and valleys of Shepard's body.) Picture frames were righted. The desk lamp returned to its place on the edge of the desk. But no sign of the rodent.

Liara gave up after a while. Widening cracks in the fish tank could easily make one forget about a wondering rodent. But she knew she would need to find it. Shepard would never forgive her if she didn't see to its safety. The fish were not nearly as important, but it would be best to send in a repair crew before it burst and shorted out the electronics in the room. Not that much of it worked to begin with. Lights that had once lit above Shepard's model ships had already shorted, and the light in the fish tank was flickering. Its effect, coupled with the setting sun through the sky light, was unsettling. The room didn't look like Shepard's room anymore. It felt alien. Cold.

Liara shivered.

A chess set, a gift from Omega's queen, that used to sit atop the bedside desk, now lay in a tumbled mess on the floor. Some of the pieces, the king, the queen, the rook lay on the floor, but one piece stood resolutely atop the desk—the Knight. There was some symbolism there to be read. Liara felt in her bones, but she could not decipher its meaning. There was only one knight she knew of, and she took it as a reminder to search him out as soon as she found what she had come here to find.

Looking up into the skylight, Liara shielded her eyes, momentarily blinded. Starlight was what her eyes expected to see. The leaves of palm-like trees swaying in the breeze above her were too surreal a vision, but not like the vision she wished to return to.

A squeak caught her attention. There, poking its nose from beneath pulled back blankets, was the fuzzy little rodent she had gone in search of.

Liara sat on the edge of the bed. "There you are. Come here, little one."

She thought it might be skittish. It usually was inside its cage, rarely coming out of the little rock inside its home. Now, it came to her without question or fear and snuggled up to her thigh. Setting the other item in her hand upon the bed beside her, Liara scooped the furry thing into her hands. She felt its shiver and sympathized. This room had become as cold as a graveyard.

"You are cold. We will have to bring you someplace warm. How would you like to stay in my cabin for a while? You can keep Glyph company." Liara took its playful snuggling as a yes. "Then, that is what we will do."

A scratching sound. It had come from outside the ship, on the hull perhaps. Liara looked up and saw nothing but the swaying of palm trees. A memory played at her senses, of having sat in this very spot and looked up through this very skylight, but she had not been alone then, snuggling a hamster to her breast. Shepard had been at her side. If she closed her eyes, she could be there again. The warmth of the sun could make that memory real. It had been comfortable inside the cabin beside her, warm, as opposed to the coldness of space. The skylight had been their window upon the galaxy, upon their wishes and dreams of the future, a future without the terror of an abrupt and bloody ending.

In that moment, there had been no death, no war, no Reapers…only the two of them, their fingers linked together, their eyes speaking words to each other no mouth could form.

Stars sparkled behind her closed eyelids. Liara reclined back onto her elbows and spoke aloud to the silent room. "It would be easy for a single ship to get lost up there, wouldn't it?"

Every second was coming back to her. The stars above mingled with the soft light in the room. The hum of the Normandy's engines, a sound as familiar and yet forgetful as the beating of one's own heart. The warmth of the hand in hers. The smell of the woman beside her, a scent more beautiful than the smell of the sweetest flower. Even the sound of her voice…

" _Yeah, it would."_

Her voice floated along the air as though Shepard herself sat beside her on the edge of the bed. Liara knew reality was different, but here and now, it felt so very real, as real as her vision, as real as reality. The hand in hers felt like truth. The voice in her ears a covenant of faith. She had to believe. She had to lose herself to the surreality.

And so, she answered…

"To find someplace very far away, where you could spend the rest of your life in peace and happiness."

It was the dream everyone wished for, but no one attained. A dream on the receiver's end of a smoking pipe. A dream real enough to feel a kiss on the cheek. Warmth moved through her, more than the warmth of sunlight. Sounds filled her ears that couldn't be. And a presence filled the room that shouldn't be there. Liara opened her eyes.

Everything that once was, was again. The past was the present. Not a dream. Not a vision. Reality. The one who filled all her waking thoughts, all her most passionate dreams, and fell to harm in her worst nightmares, sat beside her. Shepard. The strongest woman Liara had ever known sat with her shoulders slung low and her head bowed. She was close to breaking, and yet she still had her dreams, the one thing she wished for, and Liara knew what it was before she said it. It had been stamped in her memory.

" _Right now, there's no place I'd rather be."_

Together. Whether right at the end or in each other's arms for millennia to come, at least for now, here in this ethereal corporeality, they were together. Shepard's presence was real. The strength of her shoulder beneath Liara's hand as she sat up next to her was real.

As was her own voice. "Neither would I."

Shepard's lips banished the insubstantial. Her taste. Her smell. The touch of her skin. All were as genuine as the air Liara breathed.

"I love you, Shepard."

It was more than a declaration. It was a promise, a reassurance, comfort to a weary soul.

" _I love you, too, Liara."_

And there, in her eyes, was the most genuine expression of all. It transcended the bounds of those four small letters. Love needed more than three spoken words.

"Show me."

Liara did not need to beg. The need to transcend was as great in Shepard's eyes, and when their lips met, all other cares fled. The dreams of a good future. The fears of a bad one. The tragedies of the past. There was only the present. The touch of lips. The need to feel skin upon skin, body upon body. They felt no hurry as in times past, no need to rush, to jet off toward two separate lives heading in different directions. Now, their paths were the same, their purpose the same; and though their bodies were fundamentally different, their needs were the same.

The only encumbrance was the thin fabric that kept them apart, but not for long. Each piece found their place on the floor, a jumble of trousers and boots and underclothes in a chaotic heap. Then, legs intertwined. Hands searched to find places undiscovered, and lips hurried to rediscover places already found. Textured skin married seamlessly with velvet. Blue bled into pink. Mouths drank of the absinthe of the body until all that was left was to breathe and to calm the wild beating of the heart.

Sleep had come then, as it came now, unbidden, unwanted. The desire was simply to lay awake beside her, forget about everything else while listening to her breaths, counting the beats of her heart, drinking in her taste and smell, becoming one as only lovers can. But it was taken from her.

Gentle breasts at her back, a blue arm draped protectively over her own. It was the last thing she remembered before her eyes opened onto an entirely different landscape.

Gone were the confines of a starship cabin. She stood on a ground littered with fallen leaves. They fell from the forest of charred trees around her like ash from a burning sky; a twilight sky, dim and dusky. Somewhere between nighttime and morning. Somewhere between life and death.

In between the burned out husks of trees and framed by a distant, ghostly light were shimmering shapes, puffs of smoke that formed into silhouettes and then dissipated, reformed, then fell apart. Voices spoke from those vaporous forms in tones both familiar and unknowable. They reached, pulled, and jabbed, calling her name with an otherworldly power.

"Shepard…

"No apologies. Did what was right…Kalahira, Mistress of Inscrutable Depths, I ask forgiveness…Had to be me…Shepard Commander, does this unit have a soul?...You don't know what it's like, Shepard. To have garbage like that follow you. It marks you in ways you don't expect…Go back and get Williams. It's the right choice and you know it…A son and daughter. They're still on Earth…

"Shepard…

"Kalahira, this one's heart is pure, but beset by wickedness and contention…Shepard is my battlemaster. She has no equal…I don't know who you are. Not since they got their hands on you…Go get her, Commander. I'll see you all when you get back…It's so much easier to see the world in black and white. Grey, I don't know what to do with grey…Shepard Commander, help us…I don't have what you do. That fire that makes someone willing to follow you into hell itself…You're courage for my people will be remembered. You won't be alone in your fight…You are an ally against the heretics and old machines…

"Shepard…

"Guide this one to where the traveler never tires, the lover never leaves, the hungry never starve…It's a hell of a job, isn't it, Shepard? Being the good guys?...You are a great protector, _siha_ , but some things are beyond even you…I'm the best thief in the business, not the most famous…If you think you're going to change me, well, you're welcome to try…We're curing the genophage no matter what it takes…So much space, walls of stone. It's amazing. I wish my friends could see it. I wish Shepard were here…

"Shepard…

"Guide this one, Kalahira, and she will be a companion to you as she was to me…I just want to know, is the person that I followed to hell and back still in there somewhere?...Get it out of the way so we can concentrate on being big, goddamn heroes…My people have a saying: 'Seek the enemy of your enemy, and you will find a friend'…Must counteract sabotage. Stop me, if you must…Shepard, that you?...I'll march into whatever hell you want, but not with a fake smile on my face. Nothing positive about grinning like an idiot…I like to expect the worst. There's a small chance I might be pleasantly surprised…

"Shepard…

"Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong."

The voices melded together, delicately overwhelming, tenderly torturing, appraising, revering, reviling. But one voice rang out above the other insistent voices that had passed through her life—a child's laughter. There, hiding amongst the wisps of smoke was a boy with a familiar face, and yet, he was like no one she had ever seen.

Watching him as he played with a model fighter, she tried to place where she had seen him, when through the evanescent forms he saw her. Like him, she wasn't a ghost. She was real, and that twisted his child's laughter into fear. He ran, dodging between the shadows, behind trees, his white hoodie bright against the darkness. A beacon of light. She ran after him, but the voices kept calling, the shifting silhouettes kept moving. Just when she almost had him, they coalesced in her path, blocking, demanding. She couldn't move forward. She could only watch from a distance as the boy ran into the arms of another. The arms that comforted him, were as real as her, as solid as the boy. She knew them, knew the face that stared suspiciously up at her, and it froze her cold as ice.

 _She is…she is me._

The woman held the child, soothed his fears, but in their eyes, she saw what they were truly afraid of.

 _ **I**_ _am what they fear._

A nauseating truth, as nauseating as the yellow light of a smoldering heat. Inexorably, it grew to encompass them, scorching the ground at their feet, curling the blades of grass, catching fire and smoking. They would burn right before her eyes, but still, they did not move. The doppelganger pointed, a flicker of flame dancing on the end of her finger, and said, "I see what they did to you."

As if that pointing, enflamed digit was the edge of a sword, pain tore through her abdomen. Flashes of memory—Harbinger, the beam, a deafening explosion. She doubled over, ravaged by an instantaneous sensation of a million wounds, but not blind to what her eyes saw—tattered armor, two hands covered in blood, and a body beaten by warfare.

Flames began to rise around her other self. She watched her hair caught fire, smoked, curled and singed. She could smell it. In agony, the thing that was her said, "You're playing with things you don't understand, with power you shouldn't be able to use."

"I don't believe that." Her own voice was shaky, fragile. This couldn't be real. She wanted to wake up, to end this nightmare, but she couldn't. This wasn't just a nightmare. She had to face it, she had to… "If we destroy the Reapers, this ends today."

Burned alive, hair nearly gone, skin blackened, melted, the other one said to the boy in a dry, cracked voice, "Don't listen to her. She's wrong."

" _They_ have the Citadel," she cried, desperate to be heard over the sound of her other self succumbing to the flames, burning, dying. " _They_ have us fighting each other instead of them!"

Unlike the charred ruin curling up in death at his feet, the boy within the flame did not burn. Surrounded by flame, his skin did not singe, nor did his hair go up in flame. The fear had gone out of his face. He now appraised the one across from him, beaten and bloodied, as though death did not surround him, as though the world as they knew it had not come to its end.

 _Oh God, he is the flame, this boy, this thing, this…_

He spoke. "No. The Citadel is part of me. I am the Catalyst. Why do you follow me?"

… _catalyst._ The _Catalyst. I need to…I need to…_

"I need to stop the Reapers. Do you know how I can do that?"

"Perhaps." The boy's voice never raised or changed in pitch. No anger. No sadness. No happiness. And like the death of human emotion, of feeling, the flame died and the boy turned. The ghostly light she had seen before was his destination. It flickered with energy, a beam of light, highly charged and infinitely destructive. She felt it in her gut, in the ache that lived there. She couldn't let him go into the light. She had to know. He had to answer her questions. He had to help her stop the Reapers.

"Wait! _Wait!"_

He stopped and waited as she struggled to her feet, pulling upon the confines of some reservoir of strength she didn't know she still had. The shadowy silhouettes had begun to move apart, dissipate, leave them to the glumness of this place between worlds, when he turned to face her. What she saw was not the face of the boy. What she saw was the face of guilt, the face of death, the face of…

"Kaiden?"

"I control the Reapers. They are my solution."

No, not Kaiden. This thing, whatever it was, it wore Kaiden's face, but not his heart. It turned and continued walking toward the energy beam. If she wanted her answers, she would have to follow it. But to where?

 _Where am I?_

The charred forest had begun to wither into metallic struts. The leaf littered ground had morphed into grated flooring. She followed nonetheless, in her own relentless way, albeit slowly. The pain was excruciating, tearing her to pieces, but she followed. Every step was a faltering heartbeat. Life flowed out of her, warm and sticky down her legs, pooling in her boots, but she followed. She must stop the Reapers.

"The solution to what?" It kept walking. "Talk to me, damn you."

As the beam grew closer, it stopped and turned. Kaiden had gone. What replaced him was another face of the dead. It was Mordin.

"Chaos. Created will always rebel against creators. We found a way to stop it, a way to restore order. We harvest advanced civilizations, leave younger ones alone. We help them ascend, make way for new life, storing old life in Reaper form."

"By wiping out all organic life? I think we'd rather keep our own form, thank you."

"No, you cannot. Without my solution, synthetics would destroy organics."

She huffed. A mistake for the pain it brought her, but still…"That's a pretty shitty solution."

Mordin smiled and continued walking toward the beam. She knew that smile, that face, that expression. No, not Mordin. _It._ But It knew him somehow, could be him, could imbue itself with his subtle mannerisms. It was just a Reaper in a familiar form, trying to rework her brain with no more imagination than Leviathan.

"You're not the Catalyst." Spite colored her voice. She spit it like venom. "You're no different than the geth. You're just an AI."

"In as much as you are just an animal."

Pain split like an atom through her, but this time it wasn't her abdomen. It was her heart. Thane stood before her, speaking in Thane's unique voice. It may have had his mannerism, his stance, his walk as It turned to her, but It could not fill Itself with his light. There was only darkness in those black eyes. Only death.

"I embody the collective intelligence of all Reapers. I was created to bring balance, to be the catalyst for peace between organics and synthetics." It looked away, silently contemplative. Seconds passed before It looked at her again. "But our efforts always ended in conflict, so a new solution was required."

"The Reapers…"

"Precisely. My creators gave them form. I gave them function. They, in turn, give me purpose."

Leaves crunched under Its feet as It walked toward the beam again, but all she saw was destruction…all around her annihilation. Reaper ships were obliterating turian dreadnaughts, geth frigates, Alliance warships. She watched their destruction before her eyes. There was no more helpless feeling in the world. She could do nothing to stop what she herself had set in motion.

 _I am powerless. I cannot resist them._

"How can the Reapers solve conflict when we are at war with the Reapers right now?"

"You may be in conflict with the Reapers, but they are not interested in war."

A body floated past the corner of her vision. It could have been asari, krogan, quarian. It didn't matter. Just another life lost to a pointless argument that started billions of centuries ago. When she found her voice, it was hard as steel, wracked with pain and an emotion she took no pride in—hatred.

"I find that hard to believe."

The thing that wore Thane's face pointed to the body of her other self. It continued to burn, lying in the fetal position, charred, smoldering, erupting pockets of flame that burst skin and sizzled blood.

"When fire burns," It said, "is it at war? Is it in conflict? Or is it simply doing what it was created to do?"

There was no way to answer that. Defeat weighed upon her like the weight of Hell itself. This place _was_ Hell. It was _her_ Hell. She was being forced to suffer the weight of decisions made in the heat of battle for eternity—Kaiden, Thane, Mordin, and every other soul she had to sacrifice to see this thing to its end. Who really was the monster here? Even as she had no answer, there was also no way for her to win. There could be no good ending.

"We are no different," It continued, oblivious to the war raging out there as well as the one raging in her mind. "We harvest your bodies, your knowledge, your creations. We preserve it to be reborn in the form of new Reaper. Like a cleansing fire, we restore balance."

The force of gravity pulled on her weakened body, and she slunk to her knees. In her sights was her own burning body, her own fate, and yet in her mind's eye, she saw those that she loved. In her mind, she did not burn. They did. The familiar shapes of turians, quarians, asari, humans and every other species that had touched her in some way over the years burned like refuse before her very eyes.

Shepard…

For the first time in as long as she could remember, she wanted to give up. She wanted to close her eyes, to forget, to sleep an eternal sleep, but something inside, something both a part of her and yet outside her, wouldn't allow it. _Can't give up now. Sleep when you're dead,_ it demanded, and forced her to straighten her back, forced her to speak.

"But you're taking away our future. Without future, we have no hope. Without hope, we might as well be machines, programmed to do as we're told. Please…"

"You have hope, Shepard."

She hadn't wanted to look up into another face of death and guilt, but she no choice. She knew that voice. He had been her champion, her trust, her confidence that, even in Hell, not everyone could be taken down, not without a fight.

"You have more hope than you think."

Anderson. There was hope in his face, in his confident grin. He took her hand, pulled her to her feet, and despite the agony, she did it. She did it for him and only him. Above anyone else, she owed him that.

"The fact that you are standing here, the first organic ever…proves it."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you have altered the variables. My solution won't work anymore."

"The Reapers?"

Anderson shook his head. "The Crucible changed me, created new possibilities. But I can't make them happen."

"What do you need me to do?"

"If there is to be a new solution, you must act. It is now in your power to destroy us, but be warned, the Crucible will not discriminate. The technology you rely on will be affected. Synthetics will be targeted. Even you are partly synthetic."

"But the Reapers will be destroyed?"

The hand holding hers became salarian, the face that of Mordin. "Yes, but peace will not last. Soon your children will create synthetics. Chaos will return."

Faces passed before her, inorganic faces that did not flow with live-sustaining blood, but were dear to her nonetheless. "No, there has to be another way."

"There is." The voice was once again that of Thane, his eyes dark and empty like black pools of oblivion. "You could instead use the energy of the Crucible to seize control of the Reapers."

 _The Illusive Man was right, after all._

"How?"

"You must die. Your corporeal form will be dissolved, but your thoughts and even your memories will continue. You will no longer be organic. Your connection to your kind will be lost. You will control us…but you will lose everything you have."

"No." Knees weakening once again, the hand holding her didn't keep up its end of the bargain. She went back to the ground, crunching leaves beneath her, the soft ground giving slightly beneath her weight and the weight of her choice. "I can't… I don't…"

"There is another solution."

It was a voice she still heard in her dreams. Kaiden. He knelt down before her, his familiar face, the one she doomed to die on Virmire, was smiling at her. She saw forgiveness in his soft gaze.

"Synthesis. Add your energy to the Crucible's. The essence of who and what you are will be broken down and dispersed. The chain reaction will combine all synthetic and organic life into a new framework, a new DNA. You can alter the matrix of all organic life in the galaxy."

"How? I don't understand."

"Organics seek perfection through technology," said the voice of Mordin. "Synthetics seek perfection through understanding."

It became Thane. "Organics will be perfected by integrating fully with synthetic technology. Synthetics, in turn, will finally have an understanding of organics."

It became Anderson. "It is the ideal solution. Organics were not ready before, but now you are. Now that we know it is possible, it is inevitable that we will reach synthesis, and you can be the one to choose it."

"No, you're asking me to change everything… _everyone._ I can't. _I won't._ "

"Your time is at an end, Shepard," said Kaiden. His smile was gone. "You must decide. You must choose."

Over his shoulder, the Crucible took shape. On one side, the means to control. On the other, the means to destroy. And in the center, what would seem like logic was no more than a combination of the two. The choices were dark light, blue and red, sparkling and shimmering, pulling like tentacles, calling like a voice, calling her to annihilate, to dominate, to assimilate. Their lights too bright, like the sun over the horizon. Their call too deafening, too demanding, like the scream of a child, never satisfied. None good. None evil. But within each, a reckoning.

Somewhere deep in the fabric of reality, our actions are recorded and remembered, and somewhere deep in the fabric of reality, our choices will be remembered for eternity.(^)

 _What do I want to be known as? How do I want to die? What do I choose?_

"Let's get this over with."

 **EEE**

" _You did good, child. I'm proud of you."_

 _ **O**_ ne never thinks to hear those words in one's lifetime. No one does. We always hope for the recognition, and some of us never get it, no matter how hard we try, no matter who we are. An imprisoned child wanting to please her captors, a ruthless queen trying to appease her own conscience, or an orphaned daughter trying to live up to the ideals of a mother who couldn't live up to them herself.

Whether you roamed the galaxy, transferring from post to post with military parents, or you ran with gangs in the city streets of Earth's many megatropolises, or were born on foreign soil within a border colony in the Attican Traverse, believing slavers could never possibly penetrate your colony's defenses.

War hero. Ruthless renegade. Sole survivor.

Doesn't matter.

In this short life, filled with pain and heartache, it feels good to have someone tell you, "Job well done, soldier."

 _But for what?_

Breathe. Just breathe.

 _To find myself here?_

One breath.

 _To face a choice no sane person could make?_

One life.

 _What about the lives lost, the sacrifices made just to reach this place? There's no honor in this!_

One hope.

 _Of all the billions of beings in the galaxy, how does it all boil down to one person and three choices?_

Become what the Illusive Man wanted. Become God and control the Reapers, control all life.

 _I'm not the Illusive Man. I do not seek power or control. To have control is to take away hope, and without hope, there is no point to any of this. Where he would enslave and subjugate, I would do good. I would unite the galaxy. I would end war, sickness, poverty. I would bring peace. I know I could. I could help the quarians rebuild their homeland, honor Legion's sacrifice. Hell, I could bring Legion back! I could even bring the krogan back to their former glory; help them learn to control their population blooms, bring them into peaceful conditions with the salarians and the turians. There's so much good I could do._

But what if someone doesn't like those choices? What if, in the future, someone rebels? There will always be someone with a different agenda. There will always be someone like the Illusive Man.

 _With that kind of power comes choices greater than the one I face. It would be easy to play God, to squelch an uprising. But I will not become what I've spent years fighting. I am not so arrogant that I would willingly choose to lose everything that makes me who I am—my form, my humanity, my connection to those I love, my connection to love itself—in an effort to conform all sentient beings to my way of thinking._

 _That isn't the right choice. Control is not an option!_

What of assimilation? Chose synthesis and only one life need be sacrificed.

 _Mine._

No one else has to die.

 _There is comfort in that._

Sometimes one must make a choice that saves lives.

 _But at what cost? I not only sacrifice myself but the choice of every living thing in the galaxy. Do I have the right to take away that which makes them unique? Where's the rationale in taking away a person's organic identity? Where's the logic in subjugating a new synthetic lifeform, forcing them into understanding anyone, let alone their own creators? If synthesis is inevitable, then why not let it evolve naturally. And even if organics are theoretically ready for synthesis, then the catalyst is right—it isn't something you can force, nor does it mean every organic is ready._

The light up ahead has a strong pull. It strokes the ego. It says sacrifice yourself so that everyone else can live. Synthetics and organics. Together as one.

 _Who am I to make that choice? I won't._

Then, become like the Reapers. Become the annihilator. Sacrifice the lives of a few in order to save the lives of many.

 _I've fought so hard, sacrificed so much; talked a man into putting a gun to his head, lost the one person whose respect and pride I craved the most, put the Normandy in danger, my family in danger, and put hundreds of lives dead center of a Reaper target…for what?_

To destroy the Reapers. From day one, watching Sovereign descend the skies of Eden Prime, there has only been one mission—destroy them before they destroy us.

 _And in the process, I've destroyed a little of myself. Day by day, flecks of me have chipped away, through the decision I've had to make, through the lives those decisions have cost, through the loss of those I hold most dear._

I haven't fought through hell and death just to come back empty handed. The Reapers must be destroyed!

 _But how can I negate all the geth fought to achieve? To make this choice would be to nullify Legion's sacrifice, to destroy who EDI has fought to become._

I came to destroy the Reapers.

 _The choice should be simple, not damning!_

There is only ONE choice.

 _No, there is no other choice, but my choice…my life, my last breath, my final hope. Peace can exist, but not by force, not by domination, and not by sacrificing the basic right of every sentient life in the galaxy—self-determination. I will not ask anyone, organic or synthetic, to risk what I am not willing to risk myself. This began with me, and it will end with me. This is my project. My work. My responsibility. It has to be me. Someone else might get it wrong._

There is always hope.

 _Not for me. I'll give it to the ones who fought for it._

"Do as you must."

 **EEE**

 _ **T**_ ough choices rarely come with a reward. We may want the pat on the back. We may want to hear "Job well done," but the end result is not always what we imagine. Sometimes our choices come with consequences hard to bear, and sometimes those consequences require a sacrifice, but in sacrifice is where honor lies. We must give up that which we hold dear in order to preserve that which is dearer. One for many. A few for billions. There is in honor in silencing one beating human heart if it means the rest of us can go on making the tough choices alongside the easy ones.

As we travel through this life—for some of us that life is fleeting, and for others, it can seem never-ending—we find may ourselves to be the One, or among the Few, that make the sacrifice. We let what-might-have-been become a good dream. We hold our best memories alongside our worst while our world ends around us, because they were all good, because it was life. Without it, we would have had nothing to sacrifice, nothing to contribute.

And so we stand proudly in our last moments. We relish the past and we savor the moment. We stand beneath a red shadow, defiant to the end. We wait for the final moment with eyes closed, but with a heart full. We watch the last second tick with eyes open, hands intertwined, and without regret. We stare down a target through the sight of a pistol, seeing the past in the flash of an explosion, the faces of those we love in flickers of flame. Love enveloped within blue skin and a smile. Respect on the austere face of a friend. Pride in the warm eyes of a commander and a father. Compassion and the heart of a human confined within a synthetic body.

We are travelers, constantly moving forward…and looking back. Alone and as _one_. We have no choice but to try. For our insatiable curiosity. For our fear of what should happen if we don't. You are that explorer now. (*) Like an explosion of light, you race through the galaxy at faster than the speed of light, tracking fleeing starships, closing in, bumping them toward distant stars, and dismantling that which would bring them home, deactivating that which had life. You bring the consequences…

Yet you also bring hope. Your destructive powers become lifesaving. You race over land that is charred and burning, littered with corpses. Through air filled with the heat and sounds of battle, the stench of death, you become a cleansing fire. You strike the hulking behemoths, silencing their trumpet-blasts, forever deadening their burning red hearts. They fall to the ground with a seismic boom. Their children you obliterate. Your light washes over them with pyroclastic force, reducing them to ash in milliseconds. What's left of them settles to the ruined earth like snow.

And what is left in your wake, after you traverse the galaxy, bathing planet after planet in your purgatorial light?

Cheers in the city streets. Guns raised in victory. People coming out of bunkers and places of safety with tears of relief on their faces.

One of those left behind in the midst of destruction has found herself upon her knees, humbled. She looked death in the face, stared into that dark red shadow, and dared it to take her. The wall she had worked many years to build inside herself comes crumbling down. Tears that had begged to be shed since she was a girl fall onto her cheeks like the blood trickling over her tattoos. One by one, she had watched each of her teammates fall. Now, out of the ash of their attackers, she watches them rise. Seconds from death, they are beaten, bloodied, wounded, but alive. She grabs the youngest of them, despite his pained protest, and crushes him with all the love that still lives in her heart.

Limping from gunshot wounds, groaning from gouges in the skin, bruised by beastly fingers around the neck, what's left of the Normandy's former suicide squad trudge toward each other. Hands come together. Arms find purchase around bodies. Tears mingle with laughter. Happy to be alive. Relieved it's finally over.

But there is one more squad member out there waiting amidst the destruction. Two years ago, Jack wouldn't have given her a second thought, but she had proven herself an ally, and a friend. Dead or alive, Jack would not leave Miranda out there.

Another lay less than a mile away, waiting for the inevitable, for death to sink its teeth and claws into her flesh, because to die for another is to live. She did not see the cleansing fire that delved into the catacombs. She felt it. It moved through her like a shockwave, pushing her against the crypt in which he whom she could love struggled to cling to life not because he wanted to live, but because he wanted to honor what she had chosen to sacrifice. What fell upon Ensign Rodriguez wasn't death or claws or teeth. Ash rained down upon her like the gentle falling of leaves. She opened her eyes to an empty room, and a stone floor littered with the remains of her enemies.

But a cleansing fire cannot heal wounds. She no longer hears the clack clack of Abuelita's cane, or the gentle coaxing of her otherworldly whispers. Abuelita was gone, and soon she would be also. Slipping along the face of the crypt and down to the floor, Luciana has no answers for the sudden silence ringing in her ears, or for the life eking out of her. She doesn't want to know. She's simply ready to see her grandmother again.

"Rodriguez? Rodriguez, answer me, please!"

"Here. I'm here."

Hard to say if she answered aloud that crackling voice in her ear or not, or if it was only in her head, but there was an answer. "I'm coming. Don't move. I'm coming to get you." Her last conscious thought, before the body given her began to shut down, was how good it was to hear Prangley's voice again…

You leave them behind. You race onward, saving lives, decimating the enemy, crippling the galaxy from one end to the other, but no where are your labors felt more profoundly than on the Citadel. You are power incalculable. What you unleash is more than the Citadel was created to endure.

As their enemies are obliterated before their very eyes, those who thought they were safe discover in seconds that safety is relative only to the consequences, that peace can only be achieved through violence, and sometimes, the good must suffer along with the wicked.

Your light, your power strikes the Citadel more intently than any place in the galaxy, consuming its energy and turning it against itself. Arms that once reached out to her children now explode and break away. The lives trapped in that section of the Ward are left open to free space, the air in their lungs eaten up, their bodies instantly frozen. Buildings collapse. Fires sweep through entire floors. Tunnels where people hide from the Reaper terror give way to the conflagrations above.

Very few are not touched by the tragedy you unleash upon the Citadel. Some of them are huddled in a saferoom designed to withstand explosions. Saferooms are not impervious, however, not from the power of your light. Electronics fry. Walls crumple. Small fires erupt, sucking up vital oxygen and clogging the air filtering system of a volus pressure suit. A simple man with pursuits some might consider mundane, but which he sees as holy and precious, risks his flesh to stop the flames, and a drell whose father lost the battle to breathe on his own, now breathes for a turian whose lung is punctured by a broken bone.

Deep in the heart of the Citadel, so close to the center of your power as to feel the full force of it, are a human and an asari. Hands linked, awaiting death's teeth to catch them in its stinking maw, they are caught unawares by something more powerful than an explosion. Owen Bailey is the only one to catch a glimpse of it before it overtakes them. The melee of hundreds of husks, summoned by none other than the Citadel itself to keep the human and asari from affecting the final choice, are no match for you. You plough through them, reducing the echo of screeching voices to ash in seconds, but also tossing the interlopers as if they were no more than feathers. Into the churning hammers they fall, hands that were once linked coming untwined, bodies free falling separately into the unknown. Grazed by flame, impaled by falling debris, but damn lucky to still be alive.

The same cannot be said for me, here at the center of your power, the beginning of your travels. Memories were all I had in the end when the last shot rang from my weapon, when the explosion that birthed you encompassed me. I am dying. Life is slipping from me like sleep crowding in on a tired mind...and I am so very tired.

Do not mourn me. I am the traveler now, constantly moving forward…alone, as one. I made my choice. I can only hope the consequences of my actions aren't as damning as my own conscience. The rest I leave in your hands. You are the explorer now. You have no choice but to try, for the sake of your insatiable curiosity, for fear of what should happen if you don't. Take what I know is good in all of you and work together. Together, you are an unstoppable force.

I will say goodbye to you now. You will look back one last time, but I will not be there. Know that wherever you go, I will be with you. (*)

This is Commander Shepard, signing off. (*)

* * *

 **(*) - These lines with the asterisk marked beside it are from the MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA promo you might have heard before the game came out. I wanted to pay homage to those beautifully written words. They are not mine. However, they fit so well within the framework of this final segment that I couldn't pass up using them. No infringement is intended in their usage.**

 **(^) - Also, not my words. These were the words of a salarian named Padok Wiks. He is Mordin's replacement should his character have died in MASS EFFECT 2. Again, I felt these words too beautiful and fitting not to include in this telling. No infringement is intended in its usage or in the usage of other character quotes during the dream sequence.**

 **You may have lots of questions about this chapter. Much of what you read past the first few pages was intentionally dreamlike and _not all of it_ was to be interpreted as real happenings. It was essentially Shepard's dream sequence mixed with Shepard's reality and her dealings with the Crucible, but seen through both Liara's eyes and Shepard's eyes in a dreamlike state. If you were confused by or disagreed with anything, please let me know. It's the only way I'll know if I need to make any corrections or adjustments. **

**There was supposed to be one more chapter to this story that dealt with Liara and hinted at the continuing story to come, but no way I wrote it came out right. I couldn't find the precise ending with Liara that I wanted, and I came to the realization that Shepard's final words were the right ending. But this still is not the end of the story. I will continue at some point in the future. That chapter I started writing with Liara will probably begin the next story. I still have much left to tell, mainly of Liara and the crew of The Normandy on the uncharted planet, but also of the aftermath of the Reaper war.**

 **If you've read all the way to the end, thank you, and please leave a review. Tell me what you thought of MASS EFFECT: ONE.**


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